Stephan Elliott--The Hollywood Interview

Filmmaker Stephan Elliott


STEPHAN ELLIOTT FINDS PLEASURE IN EASY VIRTUE OR…HOW I BROKE MYSELF IN HALF ON A SKI SLOPE, ADAPTED A PLAY BY NOEL COWARD, AND LIVED TO TELL ALL!
By
Alex Simon

“It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.” –Noel Coward

Most show business success stories follow a familiar paradigm: 1) Misunderstood artist struggles for years to gain recognition, to little or no avail. 2) Artist is on the verge of starvation/eviction/complete mental breakdown when he/she is suddenly discovered by famous director/actor/producer/agent. 3) Artist is universally hailed as a genius and “overnight success.” 4) Artist/star lives happily ever after, with a few bumps (and tabloid headlines) along the way. Fade out. Now, let’s consider the story of Aussie director Stephan Elliott…

Born August 27, 1964 in Sydney, young Stephan found his calling early, looking at the world through the viewfinder of his Super 8 camera, which graduated to video with the invention of the Betacam. It was 13 year-old Stephan who single-handedly invented the wedding video industry Down Under, and from age 13 to 18, Elliott estimates he shot over 900 weddings. Most of the final product was, in his words, “bloody awful, but I learned a lot.”

After high school, Elliott applied for a film editing course at the prestigious Sydney Tech. There were 2000 applicants for 12 spots. In spite of his impressive reel, all applicants were required to pass standardized math and English exams at the top level. Knowing that his dyslexia would shatter any chance of his being accepted, Elliott convinced his best friend, a top scholar in both math and English, to sign up with him, and swap names during the exam. Elliott scored an impressive 95%, while his friend was oddly at the bottom of the ladder with a 27%. Elliott was accepted, although he admits sheepishly “It didn’t take them long to figure out that I’d cheated.”
Elliott spent the next decade working on dozens of Australian films, most of which were unfortunate efforts that he says taught him “how NOT to make movies.” During a holiday in New Zealand, Elliott penned his first screenplay, Frauds, which was, through luck and serendipity, read by wine entrepreneur/film producer Penfold Russell, who had just launched his producing shingle, Latent Image. In spite of a grueling shoot (the financiers just went into liquidation as the cameras started to roll), Frauds was accepted for competition in the 1991 Cannes Film Festival. Stephan Elliott was on his way.

While at Cannes, Latent Image producer (and wife of fellow producer Al Clark) Andrena Finlay asked Elliott if he had any low budget ideas she could pitch at the fest. Having just seen a Mardi Gras parade where a drag queen’s feather broke off her head dress, causing major drama, Elliott was struck with the idea of a Sergio Leone-style western set in Australia—with female impersonators. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, was written by Elliott in a feverish two weeks. The film went on to win awards at Cannes, AFI, BAFTA, and the Oscars. Years later, the stage adaptation remains a huge hit worldwide. Stephan Elliott suddenly found himself a “hot” commodity, able to pick and choose the projects he wanted. It was a disaster.

Elliott’s next two features, Welcome to Woop Woop and Eye of the Beholder, were unqualified bombs, both during production, and at the box office. The latter film was such a debacle that the behind-the-scenes documentary Killing Priscilla, shot by Elliott’s longtime friend, Oscar-winning costume designer Lizzy Gardiner, became more notorious, and noteworthy, than the film itself.

Embittered by his experiences, Elliott quit show business, vowing never to direct again. In 2004, while skiing in the French Alps, Stephan Elliott, an expert on the slopes, skied off of a cliff, breaking his back, pelvis and legs. The 39 year-old was literally broken in half and given 20 minutes to live by an attending physician. But, as luck and fate would have it, life (and the movies) wasn’t done with Stephan Elliott yet.

After three years of physical rehab (see the photos below), which included the surgical insertion of 11 titanium plates into his body, Elliott decided to throw his hat back into the cinematic ring, adapting (with co-writer Sheridan Jobbins) Noel Coward’s classic play Easy Virtue for the screen. The only previous film adaptation was done as a silent film in 1928—by Alfred Hitchcock!

Easy Virtue tells the story of the staid Whittaker family, British blue bloods who find their circa 1928 world turned upside down when prodigal son John (Ben Barnes) returns home with a flamboyant, liberated, very American wife named Larita (Jessica Biel) in tow. Kristen Scott Thomas and Colin Firth round out the stellar cast as the senior Whittakers. A biting mixture of comedy, drama, and social commentary, Easy Virtue arrives in cinemas May 22 from Sony Pictures Classics.

Stephan Elliott sat down with us while in Los Angeles recently to discuss his own unique story of being a true survivor in show business.

We should start out talking about your amazing comeback from a near-fatal skiing accident. Is it true you were literally broken in half?
Stephan Elliott: I didn’t want to make this a comeback story, but I guess it is, whether I like it, or not. I’ve been skiing for 35 years, and have never even broken a set of sunglasses. I just was pushing myself a bit more and a bit more every time I’d hit the slopes. I think part of it was my general disenchantment with the (entertainment) industry. I’d thrown in the towel. I’d given in, but I just kept pushing the boundaries (in other areas). And it’s interesting in that the moment where it all went wrong; there was plenty of time in that moment before the “snap.” There was this little voice inside me that was saying “Oh for God’s sake, let’s just get this over and done with.” (laughs) “I’ve got it coming, so let’s do it.” And I knew exactly how bad it was going to be. It’s really weird, all the shit that goes through your head at a moment like that. Time stopped, just like in the movies.

Was it an unconscious display of self-destruction on your part, based on how you were feeling?
(pause) I don’t know about that one, yet. I think there’s a little bit of truth in that, I suppose. I had a moment the other day in a car while I was talking with a publicist. Sometimes the memories of a traumatic event will come back to you in flashes—which is part of the beauty of morphine, what an amazing drug it is! (laughs) You forget large chunks, and it’s good that way, but then the moments come back and you can just feel your body locking up, and it’s bloody horrible. But ultimately it is actually what worked out. It wasn’t a life-stopper, it was a life-starter. It was the thing that told me “You’ve got to get up, and get back in the world, again.” I was completely rudderless, wandering with the faeries. (Sheridan Jobbins) and I had been writing for a couple years, and were polishing something for another producer, the sort of thing where your name doesn’t go on it, you turn it in, collect your paycheck and walk away. But when you write it yourself and you’re emotionally-invested from day one, it’s excruciating when people try to take that away from you and re-work it. So it was interesting, as an exercise, to work on something where we had a bit of distance from it, emotionally.

Photos of Stephan Elliott's recovery in the hospital. It took him nearly three years to recover from his accident.

So here you are in a hospital bed, literally cracked in half…
Literally cracked in half, yeah. At the site of the accident, I knew I was hemorrhaging (internally) very badly, and I said to the ski patrol ‘Look, be honest, how bad is this?’ They said “If we can get you out of here and get you some blood, you’ll be fine.” But the problem was, we were halfway up a bloody mountain where they couldn’t land a helicopter to medevac me out, and they had to do it the old-fashioned way, which was to lift a man with a broken back and put him in a banana boat, then drag me down the mountain, which was bad news. I was very conscious of the fact that all there was present were these 21 year-old ski instructors and I said ‘Guys, guys! Which one of you is qualified to lift a man with a broken back?’ So one of them says (French accent) “Well, we can wait to see if paramedics come up to us, but if we do that you die. If we leave you here, you die. What’s your decision?” So they got me in a fire truck and said that an ambulance was coming towards us which was loaded with a blood supply, and that I’ll be fine. We could hear the ambulance coming, and by that time it was really bad, I mean I was in shitloads of agony. Finally the ambulance arrived, the nurse jumped out, opened the kit and it was empty: she’d grabbed the wrong one. No blood. I was watching it all, they were all screaming at each other and I turned to the doctor and said ‘How long have I got if I don’t get any blood?’ He said “About 20 minutes. Make your peace, because I can no longer make you any promises.” That’s a very weird moment to go through: to be told “This is it.”

What happens in that moment?
I was surprised at how much fun it was. (laughs) What, I’m going to go out thinking about all the bad shit? This stupid grin broke out across my face and I thought ‘You know what? This is hilarious. You died doing what you love to do. Fuck, I’ve had a good life!’ There were a couple people I wish I could’ve said goodbye to, but at that moment was a small price. So I went out with this stupid grin on my face, and then suddenly woke up a day-and-a-half later. The first thing I said when I came to, is I said ‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ And so began two years of absolute hell! (laughs)

Stephan Elliott (R) on the set of Easy Virtue.

Did Sheridan approach you about the idea of doing Easy Virtue while you were still in the hospital?
Yeah, she said I should get back to work as soon as possible, which I thought was a great idea, and the other thing that happened was that the stage version of Priscilla, which I’d been saying ‘no’ to for years, I thought ‘You know what, fuck it. Okay! What am I so scared about? If I can get through this, I can get through anything.’ So (producer) Barnaby Thomas came to us with the idea of doing Noel Coward. And where else was someone going to offer you material like this? My God, it was a gift!

At the same time, it must’ve been a daunting task to adapt Noel Coward, right?
Yeah, the big challenge being that the original was a melodrama, and we wanted to turn it into more what people think of when they think of Noel Coward, which is something lighter, more comedic, but with a bite to it, that bite of social satire that he was the master of.

Hitchcock did the only other film adaptation, right?
Yeah, as a silent film in 1928. It was one of his first features, and it was essentially a courtroom drama, if you can believe that! (laughs) Our two versions couldn’t be more different. Hitch chucked the original completely out the window. It’s also interesting because he did the film right before he “became” Hitchcock. You could see some of his brilliance in it, in spots, but he was still pretty green. We stayed respectful to Coward’s original, but just lightened the tone. We used the word “reimagined.” Coward said himself in his autobiography that he wasn’t happy with the structure of Easy Virtue, and that he didn’t want his work to ever be thought of as “museum pieces.” So hopefully that’s what we did here: reimagining one of his early works in the spirit of what his work was like in its prime.

You mentioned the “bite” of Coward’s work. That’s what has always made it stand out for me: on the surface, much of the work he’s renowned for are classic drawing room comedies, but Coward’s rooms have dark, shadowy corners in them, which you don’t shy away from here.
Yeah, and again to use the word “bite,” he wasn’t afraid to bite the hand that fed him. He was a social critic, really. When I read his original play, I remember thinking, on more than one occasion: ‘Fuck! This is brutal!’ (laughs) The character of Larita in the play just doesn’t give a fuck. She’s just a bitch. She walked in, said “Fuck the lot of you,” and as the world is crumbling around her, she stays constant, even when she has a moment and goes to her room and has a tear, but then says “I’m not changing.” And then she walks out exactly the same person she came in as. So that was tough. I said to Sheridan, ‘We’ve got to humanize this a bit.’ Most of the characters in the play were pretty-one note, just speaking to each other in Coward’s trademark witticisms. At one point Mr. Whittaker, just as a throwaway, says “Yes, I fought in the war.” He was a Colonel and I said ‘Wait a minute; we’re talking World War I here. Nobody came back from WW I, and if they did, they weren’t casually smoking and drinking martinis.’ They were ruined, fucking men. So again, Coward gave us the seeds, and we developed it from there.

Was Larita based, do you know, on Amelia Earhart?
Well, I can’t speak for Noel Coward, but we certainly did. (laughs) It was a racecar, instead of a plane, but that first shot of Jessica getting out of her BMW race car, taking off her goggles, that was based on a photo of Amelia that I saw, and said ‘That’s it!’ I knew that was Larita.

That’s part of why I feel that this story is so relevant today: Easy Virtue is about 19th and 20th century values colliding in the early part of the 20th century, just as now we’re faced with old traditionalists from the 20th century—the former cold warriors who are leftovers from the ‘50s and ‘60s—who are colliding with new thinkers like Barack Obama.
Yeah, that’s another reason why we wanted to bring it to the screen, there’s a lot of parallels between the late ‘20’s/early ‘30s and now. It’s a cycle that goes round and round. It gets very liberal, and then very conservative. Like what’s happening in Britain right now: they’re nationalizing everything. I’ve got to get out of there, because it’s just getting so ridiculous. There’s a bit more of a buffer against the world economy back in Australia, because we trade with China, and things like that. Plus, the attitude is so different. In Australia when people are unemployed, they’re like “Well mate, let’s go to the beach!” They’re relaxed, but very savvy at the same time. In England, everyone is so perpetually uptight about everything. I mean, you have to fight to get onto the tube, and there’s just this atmosphere where you feel sick, like everyone’s choking.

Jessica Biel as Larita and Ben Barnes as John Whittaker in Easy Virtue.

And getting back to the film, the character of Larita is almost presented as being otherworldly, emerging from this sleek, modern, silver race car into a very drab, crumbling world that’s stuck in the past.
Right, I always thought Larita was also somewhat based on the Chrysler Building: tall and shiny, and silver and glassy. So you’re spot-on: I wanted this silver spaceship to arrive at this crumbling…pile. (laughs) The future is right there, at the Whittakers’ front door. It’s like a Martian landing, and that’s how she’s perceived by most of the family. It’s funny, when that gorgeous, old BMW arrived on the set; Jessica jumped into it and just tore off! I was so bloody terrified, going “Oh my God!” (laughs) That was a weird moment, sort of “boys with toys” on the set when that car arrived. All of a sudden, these beautiful women like Jessica Biel and Kristen Scott Thomas ceased to exist. All the crew guys sort of gathered around that car, going “Ooh, she’s beautiful!” (laughs)

That era was sort of the first instance of the “reset button” in the 20th century, wasn’t it?
Yeah, exactly. Which is exactly what we’re going through again now. In the late ‘20s, you had industry in Britain really taking off and the cities were encroaching on the country. It was the era of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. We weren’t specific about the year it took place for that reason: we wanted it to be as the roaring ‘20s were petering out, but the ‘30s hadn’t quite arrived yet, so if someone presses us for a year, we say “around 1928.”

I loved the way you brought two generations of actors together in this, with Jessica Biel and Ben Barnes on the one side, and two icons of British stage and screen like Kristen Scott Thomas and Colin Firth on the other. I don’t think anyone will look at Jessica Biel the same way again, do you?
No, and I’m glad you feel that way. Nobody had ever really let her bloom before. You take the weight of that beauty, and the baggage that comes with it, and it can get in the way of what’s really there underneath. You look at the light in that girl’s eyes and you see a highly intelligent performer who’s just bustin’ to get out. You take a gamble sometimes, and there are certainly a number of other actresses who could’ve done this part with their hands tied behind their backs, but none of them had the freshness that Jessica has here. I should actually take back the crapshoot/gamble analogy, because I felt really good about it from the beginning. And also, Colin and Kristen really took the lead with the younger actors, really took them under their wings: “Listen. Just listen to what’s going on around you.” Listen to how that line just came out of that person’s mouth, and react to that. Fuck what we did in rehearsals. Come to me blank. So they really were the buffers and it was interesting watching the generational thing, too. Colin even said “Look, I’m 50 years old. I’m at the point in my life where I need to start giving something back.” So it was great, and Ben and Jes were just so happy to learn. They were both really hungry.

Stephan Elliott and Jessica Biel hit the road on the set of Easy Virtue.

The other really clever thing about the casting was the fact that Jessica Biel has a very contemporary vibe, as opposed to a modern actress with a period vibe, like Scarlett Johansson.
Well, the casting of Jessica and Ben was very deliberate for exactly the reason you said: the merging of two generations. Ben was coming straight off of Stardust and Prince Caspian. I thought the idea of having this collision was good. I knew there were two ways of making this movie, the first being the version that your grandma would love. And you know what? I don’t want to make that movie! (laughs) I’m not the right guy for that. I wanted to make this for a younger crowd, which is just how Coward had written the original play: for young people. He was only 23 when he wrote it.

Was it tough to deglamourize two such attractive actors as Kristin Scott Thomas and Colin Firth?
That was really difficult, for Kristen in particular, I think. I mean, she looks gorgeous during the tango scene especially, but part of my job on this was to give her an ugly coat and a terrible wig…it was part mother and part schoolteacher. During the first week she struggled a bit with it and I said to her ‘Look, what can I do? How can I help?’ She said “This is really tough.” So I said “Use it. Be miserable. It will work for us.” So she did, and then she began to relax into it, which allowed us to take it to the next level, which was like ‘take her up.’ Then Kristen started getting concerned that her character was getting too “big.” She said “I’ve never been this big before!” I said “Yep. Take her up again!” (laughs) She said “I will never work again!” And she was having a blast by the end of it. She was sort of like an English Norma Desmond.

What was it like to step behind the camera again after nearly a decade, like riding a bike?
Frighteningly so. I said ‘When I come back, I’m gonna have the time. I’m gonna have the money,’ because most of the time, I’ve done micro-budget films. You work out of that environment and it’s a beautiful medium to operate in. I work really well when you pressure me. If you do that, I’ll fly. Don’t back me into a corner, and you’ll get the best results out of me, because it’s like this monster takes over. Never say “no.” “No” means “yes.” And it’s always been there. I said that this time, I’m not gonna do it that way but of course…they lied. (laughs) And the next thing you know, we’re shooting in England in the middle of the coldest bloody winter they’ve had in years, because that’s the only time we could assemble this group of actors, and even that was tight, because they all arrived at different times. So we didn’t have everyone on set until day nine, so there was no rehearsal. So from day two, I was right back in there again. We’d do an on-set rehearsal sometimes before we shot, but that also helped give it a contemporary feel, because if it had been too rehearsed, too mannered, that would’ve dated it.

Stephan Elliott confers with stars Jessica Biel and Ben Barnes.

I loved how the house was in disrepair and how a lot of the people had bad teeth, and bags under their eyes, especially the older characters. This deglamourizing was deliberate on your part?
Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, even today, a lot of these old estates are occupied by the families of nobles who’ve had them for centuries, but they live in two rooms! They can’t afford to heat and repair the remainder, but they also don’t want to sell it off to the government as an historic landmark, who then turn it into a museum, which is what many of the nobles have had to do over the years. They literally can’t afford that way of life anymore, and in our story, in the late ‘20s, that’s when that way of life first started dying out. So yes, that was all very, very deliberate. Life was harder back then, no matter how much money you had, and this family in our story is in the process of losing their, of losing everything, literally. And that’s how the three different houses were where we filmed: there were two rooms where the people lived and they were like “but you can’t go into the other rooms.” And I said ‘Ah ha! That means we’re goin’ in!’ (laughs) So the grubbiness and grittiness you see is literally authentic. We didn’t have to dress them down much. So they were all running at us to film at their estates so they could make some money, any money. They couldn’t afford to fix the windows, in some cases.

How did you choose the houses where you did shoot?
Basically according to whether we’ve seen them in lots of movies or television before. They took us to the Gosford Park house and all these other houses we’ve seen dozens of times, and I was like ‘Nope, we’ve seen all these, they're all bloody musuems, and I ain’t makin’ this movie, so let’s start seeing the other houses.’ So Giles, our location guy, had found this house that had never been filmed in before, he’d originally found it for one of the Harry Potter movies, and they’d wound up not using it, and we were like ‘That’s it.’

There is a movie god, isn’t there?
Oh yeah, absolutely. The drag queens call it “The Goddess of Synch.” She kicks in and suddenly your footing is sure, you can lip-synch perfectly and you can’t go wrong with the Goddess of Synch on your side. There’s a film goddess, too, who looks after us.

Maybe it was her who was looking out for you on that mountain.
(laughs) Maybe, mate. Maybe.


Theatrical trailer for Easy Virtue.

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MATTEO--Video Sculpture for the 21st Century

Artist Matteo on the rooftop of LA's iconic Eastern Columbia Lofts.

L.A. Artist MATTEO Brings Video Sculpture into the 21st Century

By Alex Simon

Bringing a unique blend of cinema, music, and sculpture to create an artistic genre and school very much his own, Canadian artist Matteo’s sculptures and installations are embedded with plasma screens, or projection based displays, presenting inspired and moving video art films. Each innovative piece is visually and conceptually striking as sound and image charge them with dynamic potency. With unique and evolving content and captivating designs, Matteo provides limitless options for architects, designers and their clients. Television is global, art is global. Matteo’s fusion of the two makes his work appealing on an international level. “Essentially the medium of television or film is international, and there are very few places in the world you can go that don’t have TV or cinemas,” Matteo said recently. “Therefore, what I'm putting together is cross-cultural and familiar in terms of time-based presentation of images.”


"Headspace II" Steel, acrylic, enamel, micro DLP projector, IPOD Nano; 72 x 15

Matteo’s work resides in, ‘l’espace entre,’ an interval of existence that resists contextualization though cross-fertilization. Between art and design, between constructed object and fluid light, between static and kinetic, his oeuvre is destabilizing in the best possible sense. Matteo’s tactilely rich and imaginative work elevates the viewer from the quotidian to higher levels. Or as Norman Vincent Peale stated "Imagination is the true magic carpet," and Matteo’s work takes us on a journey from the eternal to the grittiness of the contemporary that mix and mingle through object, image and sound. “I try to weave a consistent thread of visual information in all the films that I make. I use finely tuned, highly stylized imagery that flows as a visually appealing experience. reinforced by music or soundscapes to anchor each particular clip adding a cinematic dimension.” he explains.


"Ben Ali." Australian Lace and Zebra Woods, stainless steel, acrylic 50" LCD Monitor w/DVD player; 90" x 34"

A native of Toronto, Ontario, Matteo relocated to Los Angeles in 1992. Inheriting his love of the moving image from his father, who founded and ran the Cinema Studies Department at The University of Toronto, Matteo’s early artistic roots were in creating large-scale interactive new media sculptures in the Nevada desert for the Burning Man Arts Festivals.

These were hardly Matteo’s first brushes with visual culture. For over twenty years he has been producing, directing and editing music videos, commercials, short films and video art. He has won numerous design awards for his work as an Art Director and Production Designer in television, music video, stage, concert and special events and has created and designed full concept commercial venues, restaurants, offices, furniture and residential interiors. This work imposed on him the importance of fine craftsmanship of production.


"Lord Murphy-Time." An 18x24 stainless steel and glass DVD player sculpture by Matteo.

“The work is grounded in a combination of skills that I have learned in the last 25 years. I wanted to create a multilayered genre of art that had endless options. I use the screen as an electronic canvass. The layers, the audiovisual content, the design of the sculptures that displays this content, converge in unusual, surprising and unsuspecting ways. Visually fusing the imagery with sculpture engages the viewer to “experience” all of this as a whole.”

Matteo with his piece "Headspace II."

“I want to bring the work outside the confines of the traditional gallery, by placing it in settings that are more accessible to the general public and their daily lives such as hospitality based architectural installations."

To fully appreciate Matteo’s artwork, and to get an animated glimmer of its beauty and impact, please view the video demonstrations on his website: www.videosculptures.com. Matteo's gallery is located downtown at 800 S. Spring St. Los Angeles, CA. 90014. For private viewings please call: (213) 909-7046. The gallery will be open for Art Walk on June 11, 2009 from 6 PM to 10 PM.

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Talking with ANGELS & DEMONS' Victor Alfieri

(Victor Alfieri and Tom Hanks, in Angels & Demons, above.)

by Terry Keefe

Actor Victor Alfieri, who has also had past careers as both an Italian model and a Rome police officer, must have just had a lovely weekend, with the box office take of $48 million for Angels & Demons, in which he co-stars as Police Lieutenant Valenti. Alfieri has also recently been shooting the Fox Television series "Persons Unknown," for Christopher McQuarrie, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Usual Suspects. We spoke to Alfieri shortly before the opening of Angels & Demons.


Let’s first talk about how you were cast as Lieutenant Valenti in Angels & Demons.
The first time around, I couldn’t audition for it. They were casting in Italy and looking for Italian actors. I was actually there at the time, but I couldn’t meet them. I tried to get a general meeting, but I couldn’t get in. It’s a small business over there, and since I don’t live over there anymore, I was kind of “out.” I said to myself, “I wish I had a chance because I can definitely do this job.” But, then some luck came my way. As you say in America, you’ve got to be at the right time, at the right spot, right? [laughs] I was here in America and the Writers Strike came in and really pushed the Angels & Demons shooting schedule. So, it got pushed for like six months, and Ron Howard didn’t want to take a chance on losing the project, so they wanted to hire Italian actors who had dual citizenship, so they could work in both worlds. So, this time, I was sort of playing, how do you say, in my home court. I went in to audition in Sherman Oaks, and passed the first audition, and then the second audition, and each time I was auditioning with different material. They kept changing the material. The last audition was the screen test, with Ron Howard, at Sony. I was very nervous, of course, the pressure was on. Then, one night, six pages of material came through my fax, and they said that this was the material for the audition the day after tomorrow. They had changed the material again! I was shocked and it was a lot of dialogue, where I wasn’t familiar with the words. But I did it. I went in and met Ron. He was very professional. I actually had a dream before that Ron Howard was standing behind his desk and pulled out two Oscars, and he said, “Okay, let’s see what you can do.” [laughs] At the audition, he didn’t start with the reading, but he sat me down and we talked for about half an hour. About who I was, how long I’ve been here, and how long I was an actor. I was kind of blown away, because here he was, Ron Howard, as a genuine person, and he was really great. Then, he asked, “Are you ready?” So, then we did the audition, and he made some adjustments, and then he says, “Okay, thank you so much for coming, and we’ll let you know.” After that, I didn’t hear from him from like three or four weeks, which was pain, you know? But then the phone call came, telling me that I had gotten the job.

This is a good way to go home, shooting a huge film.

Yeah, it was great. I worked on and off with them for four months, or so. I’ve been treated very well. Tom Hanks was great. Ewan McGregor too. How can you complain? You’re doing one of the biggest movies of the year.

At what point did you read the Dan Brown book?

I read the book after the audition. I didn’t want to read it before. I’m a little bit weird that way. I tell my manager that I never read the scripts before I know for a fact that I’m attached to a project, because I don’t want to be disappointed if I don’t get it. My manager still doesn’t understand this part of my process [laughs]. I do my own research and preparation, but I just want to read the final script when I know I’m going to make this journey. Otherwise, it’s like going to a travel agency and planning your vacation for like three or four days, and in the end you walk out and say, “Oh, but I’m not going.” [laughs]

Did you grow up with Ron Howard on television in Italy, as many of us did here?

Oh yes, “Happy Days” was huge. The Fonz was very popular too.

You were briefly actually a police officer yourself in Italy.

Yes, two and a half years on the force. Ron Howard didn’t believe it at first, but he hired me [anyway], and the very last day on the set, we were talking again, and he asked, “So, that story about you being a police officer, was that true?” [laughs] Because actors will say anything to get a job. In Angels & Demons, I play a lieutenant of the Carabinieri police force. The Carabinieri are the oldest of the police forces that we have in Italy, and I would say the strongest. I was a policeman in the Polizia, which is a different branch. But the Carabinieri are very military, so I had to cut my hair military-style. They’re very diligent about their uniforms and hats also.

Did you meet with any of the Carabinieri as research?

Oh yeah, they were there on the set. A lot of my ex-colleagues from the police force, are still on the police force, so they came to the set also. Being on the force for a few years, I knew how to move, and so that was easy.

You didn’t ever actually shoot inside Vatican City, correct?

Right, all of the locations in Rome were outside churches. We could never go inside the churches. We didn’t have permission. But Sony rebuilt the churches and did a tremendous job.

Was there much controversy while you were shooting in Italy due to the subject matter?

I think people take movies too seriously sometimes. Movies are good because they send messages, and any form of art is there to send messages and to touch people. But sometimes you have to just do it to enjoy yourself. That’s why it’s called entertainment. If you see a scene where somebody kills somebody, you don’t just go out and kill someone after the movies. The Vatican fears that the audience will think something else of the church from this, but I don’t think so. A movie is a movie.

I think this will be better received by the general audience, in terms of positive reaction, than The Da Vinci Code was. Angels & Demons is much more of a traditional thriller story and will have broader resonance.

I think so too. Da Vinci Code had such great success, and it is so difficult to make a huge book into an equally successful movie. People read the book and they have the movie already in their minds, and if the movie doesn’t reflect what people have in their head, they’re often disappointed. I actually think it’s always better to watch movies where you did not read the book!

What type of direction does Ron Howard give?

Very specific, but at the same time, he’s very loose. He does a lot of takes, and he wants to give you a chance to do something different in each take.

Did you start acting as a young person in Rome?

I was always attracted to the acting world, and I was doing little jobs here and there, before becoming a cop, but it could never work out because over there it’s very difficult. Very closed. So, I never was able to give it the shot I wanted to.

You did manage to break into some modeling at the time though.

My grandfather owned a restaurant, and above this restaurant was a production company who used to do magazine covers and the like, and they used to come down and eat. I used to help out there on weekends. And they saw me when I was 17 and they said I had the right face and asked me if I wanted to do something for them. I asked how much I would earn and they said, “200 dollars a day.” [laughs] So I did that for a few years, and then a little accident, let’s call it an accident, ruined my face and I couldn’t do that anymore, so I became a cop.

Do you want to talk about the accident?

It’s not a big deal, but it was a fight on a Sunday night. I was with my girlfriend on the way to the movies and we encountered these people who wanted money. We had friends who were waiting for us at the movie theater. These people attacked us, verbally at first, and when my girlfriend was calling our friends for backup, one of these people was an older man, I was 18 and he was 55 or so, and he was an alcoholic person with a bottle of wine. I respect older people and I didn’t want to fight him, so I pulled the bottle of wine down, and I grabbed the guy, and I wanted just to scare him a little bit, because he was trying to attack me with the bottle. It happened so fast, and he grabbed me again, and grabbed the bottle again, and I had to really defend myself. I had no other option. So, I really punched the bottle out of his hand and pushed him towards the hood of my car, which was parked behind him, but we both slipped - the floor was wet and it was cobblestones - but he ended up hitting the hood with his head and I ended up hitting the light window, which was made of thick glass, and I broke it with my face, basically. It was a bad experience. (Actor Victor Alfieri, above.)

Let's talk about the path of your acting career, from when you arrived here to now.
I came to L.A. in early 1994, after leaving the police force. In late 94, I had my first acting job in a Miller Beer commercial. I didn’t even speak English! While I was pursuing acting, I had jobs like everyone else out here. I was a busboy; I was moving furniture; I was cleaning bathrooms; and then I became an Italian teacher. But my acting career, little by little, started to click. In 95, I did my first seven episodes of “Days of Our Lives.” And then they brought me back in 96 with a three-year contract. I was blessed.

Shooting a daily soap seems extremely rigorous. It doesn’t shoot 300 days a year, but -

Pretty close. I think we had two weeks off per year. It was a great job. I learned English and I learned how to really act. No complaints!

You recently shot My Father’s Will, with Ione Skye, Talia Shire, and the late Ron Silver.

It’s going to be a very good film. Every time I see the trailer, it gives me goosebumps. It’s all about how you don’t need money, or fame, but just love. It has a great message.

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Steve Zahn: The Hollywood Interview

Actor Steve Zahn.


STEVE ZAHN MOVES UP THE LADDER IN MANAGEMENT
By
Alex Simon

Steve Zahn has become one of his generation of actors’ great chameleons. Zahn’s filmography features roles as diverse as goofball stoners, cocky musicians and one very brave fighter pilot struggling for survival in a North Vietnamese prison camp.

It all started November 13, 1967 in Marshall, Minnesota when Zahn was born to a Lutheran minister and his wife. After being bitten by the acting bug in his Minneapolis high school, Zahn spent one abortive semester at local Gustavus-Adolphus College, before crashing the audition of a professional production of Biloxi Blues at the urging of his acting coach. Zahn, a non-pro at the time, was cast in the lead, and as the famous blues song goes, “the train kept-a-rollin’” from there, including graduation from Harvard’s prestigious American Repertory Theater program several years later. After honing his craft on stage in New York, Zahn landed his first film role in Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites, in 1994, and garnered major attention for his turn as the manic guitarist Lenny Haise in Tom Hanks’ writing/directing debut, That Thing You Do! in 1996.

Zahn’s latest turn is in the indie gem Management, playing Mike, a sweet-natured slacker in the small Arizona town of Kingman, who falls hard for an overnight guest named Sue (Jennifer Aniston), at his parents’ motel where he is employed. Reminiscent of some of the 1970s’ best oddball romantic comedies like Harold and Maude, Management is a delightful cinematic road trip that charts the unlikeliest of romances, and how what doesn’t seem to make sense in affairs of the heart is oftentimes a sign that you’ve met your soul mate. Boasting terrific support from Woody Harrelson, Fred Ward and Margo Martindale, the film also marks the directing debut of playwright (and screenwriter) Stephen Belber (Tape). The Samuel Goldwyn Films release goes into limited exhibition starting May 15, with wider distribution to follow over the next month.



Steve Zahn, who resides on a farm outside of Lexington, Kentucky with his family, spoke with The Hollywood Interview during a recent stopover in Los Angeles.

I really loved this movie. It was nice to see a film that wasn’t about things blowing up, for a change.
Steve Zahn: Thanks, man. I really love it, too. It’s so nice to be talking about something that’s so cool and so different. Aside from the fact that it’s great to do press for something you’re proud of, this film is a really terrific throwback in the genre of romantic comedy. It’s…it’s not even a throwback, it really stands on its own. It’s unique.

Yeah, but it also has a really cool, ‘70s vibe.
Yeah, because romantic comedies in the ‘70s had a lot of regular people playing the love interests, you know what I mean? You had guys like Dustin Hoffman…

Yeah, movies like Harold and Maude, which was about oddballs falling in love, which is what this is.
Yeah, and because they’re a bit odd, or even ordinary to some extent, it makes it easier to relate to them, than it is in a kind of formulaic romantic comedy, which can minimize the audience and you get what you pay for, but ultimately, it’s an experience that’s forgettable.

It’s like eating at McDonald’s.
It is, yeah. I’m not going to see movies like that because, well, I’m a guy! (laughs) But I mean, if I was a guy, I’d go see this movie. Wait a minute…I am a guy! (laughs)

The fact that it’s from the guy’s point-of-view also makes it unusual in the "rom com" genre.
Exactly, it’s from the guy’s point-of-view, and a guy that is not like an expert surfer, or whatever…

He’s not Matthew McConaughey.
Right. He’s a regular guy who works in a motel and his mom’s terminally ill. He’s trying to make the best of it, getting soup over at the Chinese restaurant and doing yoga…

I didn’t know they had yoga in Kingman. They’ve come a long way since I was there last.
(laughs) It’s so refreshing. When I read it I kept laughing so hard in my kitchen and my wife said “Wow, it’s that good?” And I said “Yeah, it’s really that good.” In the same breath I’d turn the page, and I’d be so floored and moved it and I realized ‘God, I have to be in this. How do I get in this?’ You know when you read something that great that a lot of other people are going to want to play the part and be in it, so I just immediately jumped on it.

L to R: Writer/director Stephen Belber, Jennifer Aniston, and Steve Zahn.

I saw that Jennifer was one of the producers. Was she the one that approached you with the project?
No, it was Wyck Godfrey, the other producer, and Steve Belber was also really instrumental in that. I knew Jennifer and I knew she was cool with it, but not until after. I just kind of went in blind, not caring who else was in it, as long as I was. (laughs) I sort of went in and did the meeting that they always advise you not to do: where you tell them how you’re perfect for the job. (laughs) I tried to be modest, but I just kept on saying ‘I get it, that’s all I can tell you. I get it.’ Steve writes for pauses. I get that. I understood the tempo. I understood the tone, that there was slapstick comedy and kitchen sink drama in the same movie. For some reason it all makes sense because these characters all so believable and so vulnerable and interesting and funny because of that.

Two of my favorite character actors play your parents: Fred Ward and Margo Martindale.
Those guys, both of them are…that was just a thrill, for real. Fred is the rock of Gibraltar. You won’t find a more old-school, manly guy. Those are my favorite scenes in the movie, those scenes with Fred.

He’s a real throwback to the Robert Mitchum/Lee Marvin school.
Yeah, totally. Nothing seems to really affect him, but then you see that still waters run deep. And Margo was terrific, but a lot of our scenes wound up getting cut. Steve had a really tough time losing those scenes. I don’t think he realized how well they would come off, and they wound up coming off much more deep and meaningful than he intended them to be. It kind of brought the movie into a different place, and a different tone, so they had to minimize that. Margo is so wonderful even in that little bit, that you get it. You get that relationship between she and her son. It’s like writing a symphony: you can’t just keep it at this ardaggio, you have to bring it up again.

Aniston and Zahn get mellow in Management.

It really seemed like you, Woody, and Jennifer were having a lot of fun.
We did, and it’s not always like that. I’ve had horrible times on movies, and they’re still great, because it’s a great job. But when you can’t wait to go to work the next day because you’re laughing your fuckin’ ass off, and you know what you’re doing is actually challenging and interesting, yet at the same time you know you’re doing it well, there’s nothing like it. And I had the best time with Jennifer. I don’t know what it was. We just work similarly, and she’s such a kind, great actress who comes totally prepared right out of the gate. We rehearsed for a week before we shot, which was essential, and Steve, coming from the theater, really wanted that. I was all for it, and was nervous about it. I was like ‘Let’s practice so when we get to the game I know what the fuckin’ play is, and I can catch the ball.’ I really approach things like that and Jennifer is the same way. By the first day of shooting, we felt really comfortable with each other. That scene where we fight in the basement, that really high-pitched, emotional scene, we rehearsed that two times before we shot it: we read it at the table and then we got it on its feet, and it just worked. I remember we did it and we were all like ‘Let’s just leave this one alone.’ We knew then that it was gonna be good.

Your character is a tricky one in that if he were miscast, or approached from a slightly different angle, he wouldn’t have worked at all, and maybe come off as a bit of a loser.
People have brought up the “stalker” thing, which I wasn’t worried about at all. Jennifer played it so well, and it’s really due to her reaction that the idea of him being a stalker isn’t present at all, I don’t think. But what I was worried about was him coming off as a kind of loser, like you say, this kind of sad sack.

You have to believe that Jennifer Aniston is going to fall for this guy, and the only way anyone would buy that is if you found your character’s humanity, which I think you did.
Yeah, and Sue has got her flaws, too. There are so many great scenes with her where Jennifer doesn’t say anything, like when she’s sitting in her room with her computer, and it’s just quiet. She just sits there, not knowing what to do, waiting for her time to leave, and she calls her mom…it was just so vulnerable and yet at the same time, she was able to put this wall up and be this hard woman that she didn’t want anybody to attach themselves to.

Mike (Steve Zahn)'s first clumsy attempt at seducing yuppie Sue (Jennifer Aniston).

Her issues had to do with intimacy, for the most part.
And yet at the same time, it was so cute, you know? (laughs) And that’s what Mike loves about her. And he even says in that great line “I think you’re really sweet.” And she’s like “Please…” And he’s like “No, I do. Underneath…” “Underneath what?” “Underneath the part of you that’s not.” And he’s fuckin’ telling the truth! And then he walks away, and that’s what brings her around to him. He’s very honest.

He was probably the first person to really see her in a long time.
Yeah, or ever, aside from her mom, or whatever. It’s a very interesting movie and the challenge is to get people into seats so they can see it. How do you market this movie?

Yeah, how do you compete with tentpole, “event” movies like Star Trek, and the like that populate most of the summer?
I don’t worry about that stuff, or the new Tom Hanks movie. Those are completely different movies. And this thing is going to go out and platform itself across the country. It won’t be this big opening. It’ll be in Lexington in probably like, two weeks, and people will be like (Kentucky accent) “I couldn’t find your movie. We all went out but we couldn’t find it and had to watch…some other thing.” (laughs)

Let’s talk about your background a bit. You were born and raised in Marshall, Minnesota.
I was born in Marshall and raised in Mankato. My dad was the chaplain at Mankato State University, and my mom worked in the bookstore. We lived just off-campus. Then we moved to the suburbs of Minneapolis, to New Hope, which is where I went to high school.

Then you went to Harvard for grad school.
Yeah, I went to Gustavus Adolphus College for undergrad, but dropped out. It’s a very strange story. I worked professionally in Minneapolis, but I’d already paid for a semester, so I thought, ‘Okay, I’m gonna stay, and eat at the caf’ and lift weights.’ (laughs) I was stupid. Then I moved home and started working professionally, and auditioned for different grad and training programs, after working with these really amazing professional actors in these plays. They were like “You gotta go train, man. Go East and learn,” which was the best advice I got, ever.

When did you know you were an actor?
I was in high school and I was the guy that always got cast in the school play. Theater is huge in high school in Minnesota and I knew that I was very good at that, and gifted and I was “the guy,” but it still wasn’t something I ever thought of as “a job,” or something that one could do professionally. I was going to be a Marine before I was going to be an actor. I was really serious about joining the Marine Corps. Still all I read about is military history, and all that stuff. It’s not till I got to college and also I went to London for a trip and saw theater there, and realized that this was what I wanted to do.

Was there one epiphanous moment during a particular play that did it for you?
It was all of them: I saw Les Mis, Starlight Express, and everything that was on stage there. I just loved it. I knew what I wanted to do. I was like ‘I have a goal! This is my goal!’ (laughs) I was like Mike, in that sense. I had never thought farther ahead than the next day before that, and I was happy with that and…I’m still like that. (laughs) So I got back to Minnesota and was working in this machine shop, and my mentor, my acting teacher said “Look, they’re doing Biloxi Blues at this professional theater. Just like and say you’re in Equity and audition.” And I was like ‘Uh…okay.’ (laughs) So I went out and lied, and got the part. I told them I wasn’t Equity, and they said “Don’t worry, we’ll make you Equity.” And I got great reviews and was the guy that stuck out, and my co-workers were like “You’re good, man but you still have a ways to go. You need to study and figure things out.” They knew I was just a puppy. “Don’t get too sassy. Go learn.” One of my roommates suggested I go to the A.R.T. program at Harvard, which was basically the old program from Yale, but moved to Harvard. So I auditioned and got in there. It was a two year program, and was fantastic.

Was it an M.F.A. program?
No, it was very strange. We were Harvard students. We got IDs. We went to classes. We went to lectures, whatever we wanted, and yet I was committed to the theater and the institute there. Then at night, I was committed to working with the company. Now, it’s an M.F.A., with Theater Moscow. It didn’t really have its legs yet, because it was brand new, but was the “new Yale” drama program, but it was at Harvard. It was ideal, though because we didn’t have any pressure about getting grades. They were like “No, you’re absolved from getting grades,” and I was like ‘Fuckin’ A!’ (laughs)

The Wonders, from Tom Hanks' That Thing You Do! L to R: Hanks, Jonathan Schaech, Liv Tyler, Ethan Embry, Tom Everett Scott, and Steve Zahn.

You did a lot of stage work in New York, then made your film debut in Reality Bites. But the film I really took notice of you in for the first time was Tom Hanks’ That Thing You Do!
That was just on TV last week. That movie’s so timeless. That was really the baptism for me. That was school. Tom really nurtured us in that. He had a tough job, but he really took the time to teach us. He’d say things like “Here’s what you do when you stand up in front of a camera. Don’t stand up too fast because…” and he would explain. And I really learned everything technically about film acting from Tom. Also about showing up for work on time, knowing your shit, setting the tone, all those things you kind of know on some level as a beginner, but it’s so helpful to have someone tell you. When you have someone like Tom Hanks say to you “When you’re a lead in a movie, you set the tone. If you come in late and not knowing what the fuck you’re doing, then that’s how the crew is going to be, that’s how your fellow actors are going to be,” and so on. And he was totally right about that. You do have to be that leader, and set that standard. He was brilliant, man.

So it’s different being directed by a fellow actor, as opposed to someone who’s just a director?
Oh yeah, for that very reason. He really understood the process. Any director who’s also acted understands the fact that every person has a different process and has to be approached differently. That doesn’t necessarily make for a better show. Sometimes that director is not good, because they’re just referring to their own experience and not taking your process into account. But that’s what so great about this job: every job is so fuckin’ different from the last. If I go through the last three years and all the things I’ve done, they’re all so different.

Zahn in Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight.

Speaking of different, your character in Out of Sight couldn’t have been more different from the guy in That Thing You Do! What was it like working with Steven Soderbergh and that amazing cast of actors?
Oh man, I loved that. The first time I saw it was at the premiere and I was sitting in front of (Don) Cheadle, and he said “Have you seen this yet, man?” “No.” And he was like “Fuck!” He was so excited that I was about to see it and that we were a part of it. It’s kind of like this movie. It’s such a nice feeling to be in a movie that you know is going to be considered to be very good, that’s going to be somebody’s favorite. Soderbergh just sort of lets you do your own thing. He’s the only director I’ve ever worked with who never really watches the monitor. He just watches the actors. I’m someone who kind of likes a lot of input from the director, but he doesn’t really do that.

Clint Eastwood is renowned for that.
Yeah, I really like that. And I love the fact that he doesn’t yell “Action!” I hate that shit! Soderbergh doesn’t do that, either. I mean, some directors are like (affected voice) “Okay everybody, here we go. Ready? 4, 3…ready to pretend? Remember, you’re not you. You’re someone else. And here we go, and…(yells) EVERYBODY QUIET! EVERYBODY QUIET! WE’RE ABOUT TO DO SOME MAGIC! EVERYBODY WATCH THE MAGIC!” And you’re just like ‘Fuckin’ shut up, man! You’re reminding me…’ “AND—ACTION!!” (laughs) Everybody knows what’s going on. Just turn the fuckin’ camera on. Please! (laughs)

Do you know who the director Sam Fuller was?
Yeah, I’ve heard of him.

Instead of saying “Action,” he used to shoot a .45 automatic into the air before each take.
(laughs) That’s awesome! I find a lot of time with new directors, they’re so…let’s say the final word of the scene is “bird,” okay. So you’re saying ‘So that’s why we killed the bird.” “CUT!” (laughs) You just want to say ‘Dude, film is really cheap, just let it go for a while.’ (laughs)

Tell us about being in the universe of Werner Herzog with Rescue Dawn.
Oh, that was totally different from anything I’ve ever experienced. He’s just an artist, pure and simple. There’s no defining him or figuring him out. The minute you think you have him pegged, he’s different the next day. And the trap is to be preoccupied with trying to figure him out. And once you give into that, and just say ‘You know what, that’s just the way he is, and this is going to be kind of chaotic,’ then you’re good. And Christian (Bale) and I understood that right off, and we work really similarly and became really close, which helped make that film a really great, fun experience. I was so into that film. We didn’t get paid a lot. It was a small movie, but I felt very connected to it. It was something I had to be a part of. Werner’s documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, which the film was based on, changed my life. That movie is brilliant. It’s so inspiring. So when I found out he was making a dramatic film of the story, I knew I had to be a part of it, and I’m very lucky that he let me be. I’d never played a real person before. I have a picture of Duane, the real Duane, on my fridge. The minute I wanted to cheat, I would just look at his picture and…there was no cheating. I felt a real responsibility there. Dieter’s wife and kids visited our set in Thailand during the shoot. His wife walked in, looked at us, and just had to leave. It wasn’t a “set,” per se. Werner liked to keep things “If you don’t need to be here, you’re not here.”

Zahn and Christian Bale in Werner Herzog's harrowing Rescue Dawn.

What’s his process like in terms of how he works with actors?
I don’t know. (laughs) Dude, I’m telling you…he loves actors. He admires the process. He’ll lose weight with you and he’ll be the first to dive in the river to show you there’s no rocks and that it’s safe. I like that about him. But there’s another part of him that doesn’t want to feel anything. It changes every day. One day you’ll do something and he’ll just get up, come over and hug you. And it’s kind of weird and out of the blue, and it’s him telling you that it was great. Then the next day, it’s like he doesn’t notice anything. He yells at somebody, and yells at you, and he walks away. And it’s fuckin’ crazy! (laughs) But I loved it, and I love him to death. I really do.

Any final thoughts about Management before we wrap up?
I just hope that it’s a film that people discover and will continue to discover years from now. And if it takes years, that’s okay, too. But I sure would like to be in one finally that people see and does a little bit of business. (laughs) Go see it!


Theatrical trailer for Management.

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Talkin' Westerns with A.C. LYLES

(A.C. Lyles, below)

by Jon Zelazny

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared at EightMillionStories.com on February 27, 2009

There’s an A.C. Lyles Building at the Paramount Pictures main lot, but you won’t find A.C. Lyles there; his office is on the fourth floor of the William S. Hart Building.

When I arrived for our interview, Mr. Lyles was chatting with some visitors in his outer office. He bid me into his main office, and asked his assistant Pam to put in a video… a short promo reel that opens with a six minute tribute by then-President Ronald Reagan, who warmly recalls his and Nancy’s many years of friendship with A.C. and his wife Martha, and congratulates A.C. on his fifty years at the studio. The President’s intro is followed by taped congratulations from President Carter, President Ford, and Vice President Bush, then assorted clips celebrating Mr. Lyles’ career.

He started in the movie business at the age of 10, as a page at the Paramount Theater in his hometown of Jacksonville, Florida in 1928. After completing high school, he moved to Los Angeles and wrangled a job in the Paramount Studios mail room, rose up the studio ranks through the publicity department, and became a producer in the late 1950’s, specializing in low-budget Westerns. Most recently, he served as a consulting producer on the acclaimed HBO series Deadwood.

At age 90, A.C. Lyles remains a gentleman of immaculate appearance and courtly demeanor, and simply casting your eyes about the array of beautiful photographs lining the walls of his office is to experience an abridged history of all Hollywood.

A. C. Lyles: I’m sorry I’m a little late; I was on the phone for almost two hours with John Wayne’s birthplace.

Which is where?

Winterset, Iowa. It was a town of 5,000 people when he was born on May 23rd, 1907... and Winterset is still a town of 5,000 people, but the house where he was born is now a shrine. It’s only 500 square feet. I’m on the board there. We put up some signs along the highway that said, “Come See John Wayne’s Birthplace!” and last year some 20,000 people visited—four times the population of the town!

He made so many great pictures for us, including True Grit (1969), which he won the Academy Award for. After he won, he told me, “Why didn’t you tell me it would be this successful? I would’ve worn an eye patch twenty years ago!”

Are you generally thought of as a Western guy?

I think so. And I’m happy about that, because I love Westerns. And if you’re associated with one type of movie, people remember you for that. I think Westerns are the most moral story you can tell. It’s good against evil, with good always winning out, and in that framework you can have all the action you want; it’s justified in the end.

My association with Westerns goes all the way back to the series Rawhide, where Clint Eastwood started. There’s Clint there…

He indicates a photo of himself with Eastwood and James Cagney.

I’d like to go back even further. We’re currently sitting in the William S. Hart Building. I’ve read he was the greatest Hollywood Western star of the 1910’s and 20’s, which I guess makes him one of the few Paramount stars who was before your time?

No, I knew Bill Hart. His last feature was called Tumbleweeds (1925). Years later, Joel McCrea—who was so kind to me when I was an office boy—took me out to Newhall to meet him. And I was very surprised when I met him because he was a very cultured man. He had this wonderful voice; he’d been a Shakespearian actor. It was like when I met Charlie Chaplin—he was in a cashmere suit, had beautiful gray hair; a handsome guy… such a far cry from the Little Tramp. He knew I was a fan, so he invited me to his studio at La Brea and Sunset. But a lot of the early Western stars were friends of mine. I knew Tom Mix. Ken Maynard. Hoot Gibson. Buck Jones. Gabby Hayes.

How important were Westerns in Paramount’s history?

One of the first big pictures Paramount made was The Squaw Man (1914) with Dustin Farnum. Cecil B. DeMille came out to make it. They were going to do it in Arizona, but it rained for three days and three nights, so someone suggested they do it in California. He came to Hollywood, found this barn on Vine Street and Selma Avenue, and made it his headquarters. Later, we moved that barn here to the lot. I put a porch on it, made it into a way station, and used it in just about every Western I made! Now it’s across from the Hollywood Bowl—The Lasky-DeMille Barn—it’s a museum.

We also did a very famous series of Westerns with Hopalong Cassidy. That went on for many years. Joel McCrea did a lot of Westerns here, often for Cecil B. De Mille. Gary Cooper made The Virginian (1929) here; one of his earliest talking pictures. And "Bonanza" filmed here all the time as well.

I saw they did a lot of Zane Grey adaptations here in the 1930’s, with Randolph Scott.

Randy was a great star. First for us, then he teamed up with Harry Joe Brown and made a whole series of wonderful Westerns for Columbia. So many of those great stars started here. On my 10th birthday, I saw a picture called Wings (1927); it was the first picture to win the Academy Award; a solid picture—

I’ve seen it. It’s amazing.

Bill Wellman directed, Charles “Buddy” Rogers starred, with Richard Arlen, and Clara Bow, and—for two minutes—Gary Cooper. That one short scene made him a star. And when I eventually came out here to work at the studio, I became close friends with all of them! I gave all their eulogies.

I do a lot of eulogies now. Nine last year. Rhonda Fleming just called me; she told me she’s just redone her will, and in it she’s requested that I do her eulogy. I said, “Just a minute, Rhonda; let me get my date book and make a note of it!”

Did Paramount founder Adolph Zukor have any particular affinity for Westerns?

Mr. Zukor leaned very heavily toward pictures that made money. And Westerns made money. The first picture to ever make big money was The Great Train Robbery (1904). Have you seen it?

I have.

So Westerns have always been with us. People are still talking about one made seventeen years ago, Unforgiven (1992). I think Clint is as good a picture-maker as there’s ever been: always on budget, always on schedule, always makes money… and a hell of a nice guy.

Did you see Gran Torino (2008)?

I loved it. It’s like Dirty Harry grown older.

And talk about star power… when he’s on screen, you can’t look away.

Absolutely riveting. Cagney had that as well; you could not take your eyes off of Jimmy. And John Wayne. When Duke was up there, you always wanted to be on his side.

I think what’s amazing about Eastwood is how he doesn’t mind aging on film. I mean, Cagney retired when he was about sixty, right?

Sixty-two.

Which is when Eastwood really started to blossom. I think his truly great work began when he was 62.

Did you know Cagney made a Western? Him and Bogart… it was called The Oklahoma Kid (1939). These two New Yorkers—Jimmy and Bogie!

That reminds me, Clint always wanted a copy of that picture. He adored Jimmy Cagney; one of his idols. I have to get one over to him.

These pictures are really something.

Somebody asked me once if there were any stars I hadn’t met that I’d like to. I thought for a minute, and said, “Jimmy Stewart.” Three days later the phone rang, and it was him! “What are you doing for dinner tonight?”

But Jimmy Cagney, Ronnie Reagan, and Duke were my three best friends. Well, you saw it in that promo film. Ronnie said I was the first person who told him he would be President… and that was six years before he ran for Governor!

What was it about him that led you to believe that?

Destination. He was absolutely destined for it.

How so?

In the same way anyone who met Elizabeth Taylor when she was a girl knew she would grow up to be one of the most beautiful women of all time. When I would hear Ronnie talking as President, he was saying all the things he used to say fifteen, twenty years earlier. When he went in, he knew exactly what he wanted to do. And he was very successful. The more time goes on, I think people appreciate him more and more.

And he made a few Westerns too!

He did four here. A couple with Rhonda Fleming… The Last Outpost (1951), and Tennessee’s Partner (1955). On one of them, he got his first horse; a black one named Tar Baby. They made the picture in Sedona, and he just loved that horse so much, so I told the studio, and they sent it over to him.

When you study the history of Westerns, people generally regard Stagecoach (1939) as the first really “classy” Western. Is that accurate?

Yeah. John Ford was the master, and Duke… see, Duke was a college student out here; he was playing football for USC, and the studios were making a lot of pictures about college ball, so they’d bring the whole team in. Then Duke got a job on John Ford’s crew, and that’s really where Ford found him. But Stagecoach made him.

How did you first begin producing Westerns?

Paramount had a board meeting. They asked me to come in, and they said, “We have a problem. There’s no Western on the schedule.” I said, “Well, I have a great script.” And I did it. And it made money. And they said, “How many can you make a year?” I said, “Five!” They said, “Go make ‘em!”

Who did you report to?

I didn’t report to anyone. I told them I could only do it if I didn’t have a committee. I usually came up with an original story. I didn’t write screenplays—writers wrote the scripts—I just started it, cast it, made it, and shipped it to New York. I didn’t tell anybody what the story was, or what it would cost. I was a one-man studio within a major studio, and that was the only way I could make them.

What was a schedule like for one of your pictures?

I never told anybody.

(pause)

And you’re still not?

I never told Paramount what they cost. Because you don’t preview a budget, you preview a picture.

I was curious because I worked on one Western myself. It was for TNT, and we had thirty shooting days, which seemed pretty tight. Then I talked to Arthur Penn a couple months ago about The Left Handed Gun (1958), and he said Warner Bros. only gave him twenty days.

Vincent Canby once wrote a story about me. It was called “Money Invested, Money Returned,” and his opening line was, “A.C. Lyles has been the most profitable producer in the history of Paramount Pictures.” And it was true.

I only managed to find one of them at my video store: Johnny Reno (1966), with Dana Andrews and—

Jane Russell. Who else was in that one?

Lon Chaney, Jr. Richard Arlen. A lot of old-timers.

Those were my buddies. I always tried…

He indicates the poster of his film Black Spurs (1965).

Rory Calhoun, Linda Darnell, Scott Brady, Lon Chaney, Richard Arlen, Bruce Cabot, and Terry Moore. They’d call me and say, “When do we start the next one?” I’d say, “Three weeks.”

Were they studio contract players? Or was that system already gone?

They called them “The Lyles Posse.” I used them a lot. Richard Arlen had done so many Westerns in his time. When I was an office boy, he told me I’d be a producer some day, and that he wanted to be in every picture I made… and I never made a picture without Richard Arlen! And all the other people on the lot who were my friends… they did so much for me. So much.

Why do you think Westerns finally fell out of style?

Things go in and out of style. Like all those great musicals MGM made…

Those are sort of coming back. There’s usually one high profile one per year now.

And some Westerns. You had Appaloosa last year.

I had so much fun on the one I worked on. It was called Purgatory (1999).

I read that script before they made it. It had kind of an interesting twist to it.

Yeah, kind of Twilight Zone-ish. Did you see it?

I don’t think I ever did.

Well, I brought you a copy. I thought you’d get a kick out of it.

Good. I’d love to see it. (He examines the DVD box) This had some good people in it... and it had a great opening. I don’t remember who wrote it.

Gordon Dawson. Who was one of Sam Peckinpah’s guys. His original draft was pretty tough; a real R-rated movie.

It sure was.

But TNT doesn’t do R-rated movies; they like things more family-appropriate, so we had to tone it down. But Dawson was working for Chuck Norris in Texas, so the director and I did all the script changes.

Who’s this director? U - l - i… ?

Uli Edel, from Germany. He’s great; I’ve worked for him a lot. He’s going to the Oscars for the first time next week; his new movie The Baader Meinhof Complex was nominated for Best Foreign Language Picture.

Interesting… Yeah, I remember this script. It was around for a long time before it got made. We couldn’t do it here because it was too expensive.

We had to scale it down that way as well. We took out the river crossing, and the Indian attack, the buffalo stampede… I also believe this was the last movie shot at the Western town at Warner Bros. before they tore it down.

I don’t think there’s a standing Western set anywhere in town now. We did Deadwood out at Melody Ranch in Santa Clarita.

I was going to ask about Deadwood. How did you get involved in that?

HBO got together with Paramount on that; they retained the domestic rights, and gave Paramount the foreign rights. David Milch, the creator of it, called me their first day, and said, “You did a lot of Westerns at Paramount, so…” He admired what I did, and wanted me to be around. And it was a very successful series.

Were you surprised by the profanity?

Yeah, I was. But David had really done his research. He was a professor at Yale for twelve years; he taught story writing. And most of those characters in Deadwood were all real people, and that dialogue… that was the way they talked. It sort of went with the look of the picture; the griminess of that town. It was very authentic. People might have been shocked, but not too many objected. We didn’t get too many complaints.

Can you imagine what all those guys who made Westerns under the studio system would have thought of it?

Nope, you couldn’t have done it that way back then, that’s for sure. Only on cable.

I mean, even when Peckinpah began, his pictures were clean. Something like Ride the High Country (1962)—

With Joel, and Randy—

That had to have been one of the most beautiful films you’d ever seen.

Oh boy, was it. I knew both of them so well; I just talked to Joel’s grandson the other day. And Peckinpah… God, what an interesting person he was. He was as interesting as any of the pictures he made.

But he does Ride the High Country, this beautiful, classic, all-American Western… then Major Dundee (1965) was much darker, and then you get to The Wild Bunch (1969), which was like nothing anybody had ever seen. What did you make of where he was going?

I tell you, I just appreciate anybody that can make pictures that people see and enjoy. I’ve been a member of the Academy for sixty or so years. I see movies here at the studio, and at the Academy screenings; I have a season pass at every theater in town. I see almost every picture made… and I’ve never walked out of a picture in my life. Never.

You’ve lived an extraordinary life. To what do you attribute your longevity?

Oh, let’s see… well, I never started drinking. I never started smoking. Strangely enough, I’ve never exercised either. I belong to the Bel Air Country Club, but I’ve never played golf… the most exercise I get is brushing my teeth! I’m six-one, and I’ve never weighed 150 pounds; it’s always around 148, 147. I don’t diet; it’s just my metabolism.

See that picture? That’s me with Mr. Zukor on his 98th birthday. We always had a party for him. I said to him, “What do you want me to do with this leftover cake?” He said, “Save it for next year!” He lived to be 103. He was my mentor; both he and Cecil B. DeMille. They really took care of me. Not only taught me how to be a producer, but… what to do with my money. How to dress.

I’d wanted to work for Mr. Zukor from the moment I saw Wings when I was ten years old, and it came true. And now I’ve spent eighty years doing what I wanted to do.
####

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USC Alum/Producer Laura Ziskin to be Keynote Speaker at SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS This Friday

(Laura Ziskin, above left, on the set of Spider-Man, and Shonda Rhimes, below.)


"Grey's Anatomy" Executive Producer and Head Writer Shonda Rhimes will also receive the Mary Pickford Foundation Award at the ceremony.

by Terry Keefe

Two of the most successful alumni of the USC School of Cinematic Arts (SCA) will be featured players at the SCA Commencement this Friday, May 15th. The Commencement Address will be delivered by producer Laura Ziskin, who counts the Spider-Man franchise amongst her many producing credits. Other Ziskin productions include As Good As It Gets and Pretty Woman, as well as the 74th Annual Academy Awards Show.

Shonda Rhimes, the creative force behind "Grey's Anatomy" and "Private Practice," will receive the distinguished Mary Pickford Foundation Award, which is given to distinguished alumni. Past recipients include: Brian Grazer, William Fraker, Conrad L. Hall, Ray Harryhausen, Alan Ladd Jr., Michelle Manning, Walter Murch, Jay Roach, Gary Rydstrom, Stacey Sher, John Singleton, David L. Wolper, and Robert Zemeckis, as well as Laura Ziskin.

Said SCA Dean Elizabeth Daley, “Laura Ziskin honors us by serving as our commencement speaker. We are thrilled that she will generously give of her time and wisdom on this very important occasion. Shonda Rhimes is another of our distinguished alums who has continued to support and encourage our students throughout her amazing successes. We are delighted that both these successful women will join us this year.”

The Hollywood Interview recently attended the dedication ceremonies of the first buildings of the new SCA campus, a facility which will rival the technological and production prowess of some of the major studios in town, when completed. Filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg spoke at the event, in front of brand-new buildings which feature their individual names.

Our coverage of the SCA Dedication can be found in three parts below and the website for SCA is here.

SCA Dedication - Part One

SCA Dedication - Part Two

SCA Dedication - Part Three

(Above, a view of the Courtyard and Statue of Douglas Fairbanks at the new SCA. Photo by Gregory Weinkauf.)






Additional SCA Alumni of recent note include directors Bryan Singer, screenwriters Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski, and Star Trek and "Lost" producer Bryan Burk.

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ELECTRIC ARCADE: MAY 2009

ELECTRIC ARCADE
By
Alex Simon

May brings evermore titles of gaming for various platforms, and you'd be hard-pressed to find one that pushes the high-tech envelope with more eye candy than NINJA BLADE (Microsoft; XBox 360; Rated M). You play modern-day ninja Ken Ogawa, who must assume a secret identity to battle a parasite that has mysteriously appeared and unleashed a wave of destruction and chaos--mutating humans into viscious, savage creatures that thirst for blood! Once the disease has covered nearly the whole of Japan, including the heart of Tokyo, Ken must slice and dice through the mutants to save not only his homeland, but the human race, before the parasite is allowed to infect more of humanity.

Knock-out visual effects, including some truly creative and fire-hose level bloodletting that is reminscent of the Lone Wolf and Cub samurai films, allows the player to become fully-immersed in this terrific game, which expertly blends strategy and problem solving with full-throttle battle. If you try to run-and-gun your way through this particular title, you'll find yourself on a frustrating, and futile, journey.



Transitions from quick time events to interactive play are nearly seamless, and Ninja Blade offers the player a huge world in which he or she can interact, even shifting camera angles and POVs. Upconverts easily to 1080p high-resolution screens, with little, if any, pixilation in the graphics. This is definitely a next-gen game title, made with plasma screens and high-def resolution in mind. Kudos to Microsoft for producing a rated M title that is truly designed for adults with brains, as well as tweens with itchy trigger fingers.

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THE LONG GOODBYE: Elliott Gould Remembers Robert Altman

(Elliott Gould, above, as Philip Marlowe in The Long Goodbye.)


by Jon Zelazny

Editor’s note: this article originally appeared at EightMillionStories.com on November 14, 2008.

With the back-to-back success of his Oscar-nominated role in the off-beat wife-swapping hit Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969) and the even bigger off-beat hit MASH (1970), Brooklyn’s own Elliott Gould skyrocketed to worldwide fame.

While perhaps best known to those under 40 as Ross and Monica’s dad on “Friends,” or Vegas financier Reuben Tishkoff in the blockbuster Ocean’s 11 series, cine-scholars generally regard Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973) as Gould’s most iconic starring role. 2008 marks the 35th anniversary of their extraordinary modern-day reinterpretation of Raymond Chandler’s classic private eye, Philip Marlowe.

Elliott Gould invited me to his home in west Los Angeles, where he generously spoke at length of his three major collaborations with Altman, who passed away two years ago.

I read that article J. Hoberman wrote last year on The Long Goodbye, and I have to tell you, most of what he wrote about is of very little interest to me. All that stuff about what you meant as a Jewish icon, and all that.

ELLIOTT GOULD: Did you see the artwork with it? That picture of me they doctored to make me look more like Borat? I had friends who were really offended by it. The whole Jewish aspect of my early fame, and how unlikely that was; that was Hoberman’s take on it. My take was… well, it was a lot of space they filled. I was flattered by it. But to take a still of me from The Long Goodbye, and make it look like a caricature?

Hoberman’s essay: http://www.villagevoice.com/2007-04-10/film/the-goulden-age/

My beef is it seems more about him than you. Why did he even bother talking to you? I’m interested in process. Your process, Altman’s process, and how they came together. I want to focus on The Long Goodbye, but obviously you met on MASH.

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice was my third film, and the film in which I discovered my first objective relationship, which was with a camera. It does not lie to me, or manipulate me, or patronize me, or judge me. It simply reports what I am and what I’m doing. After that, I went to New York to do a play called The Way of Life, which was being directed by Alan Schneider. We went into rehearsals, and first Alan was fired—so we knew there was trouble—then I was fired. The author, Murray Schisgal, said to me, “Why can’t you be as good in rehearsal as you were when you auditioned?” I said, “My audition was a sampling of what I could bring to this text. You have to be patient, and you have to have confidence in me.” But all the insecurity of production… I could teach a course on that! Anyway, I came out to California, and was asked to take a meeting with Robert Altman.

Had you heard of him before?

No. He gave me the script for MASH, and asked if I would play the part of Duke Forrest.

Duke is the southern good old boy. Why did he think you’d be good for that?

I don’t know. I guess I had something he wanted for the picture. I told him, “I’m here to work, and I can do that part… but I also know I’ll have my head up my ass the whole time trying to be a southerner. But this Trapper John… I’ve got the juice; I’ve got the energy for it. If you could see me in that, that’s what I’d really like to do.” And that was that. He cast me in the part I wanted to play.

What was it about Trapper John you really grabbed onto?

An energy. An irreverence. He was good at what he did. It was just something I knew I could express. And I could play. I love to play.

(Filmmaker Robert Altman, above)

What kind of prep work did you do before you started? Had you read the novel?

No. I read the script, which was by Ring Lardner, Jr., but I didn’t think much of it. As far as I’m concerned, MASH is Robert Altman’s vision. I remember when we showed the picture to Lardner at the studio, he came up to me afterward and said, “How could you do this to me? There’s not a single word in there that I wrote!” And he went on to win the Academy Award for Best Screenplay!

Initially though, Donald Sutherland and I had a problem with Bob, because he was… well, as he once explained to me, “I learned how to put it together in chaos; therefore, I create chaos in which to put it together.” And I just thought, “Hey, you’re dealing with experts and professionals here. Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it.”

What were those first few days of shooting like? When did it first hit all of you that you were venturing into some uncharted dramatic waters?

That only really became apparent in the editing process, and how he eventually put it all together. It was certainly unusual to have such a good time. And we had a great time. But if you don’t tell me what to do, I’ll orchestrate my own actions. I’ll interpret the character, working in concert with what everyone around me is doing, but you have to tell me. That’s why we had some problems, because Bob was just doing his thing, and I didn’t get it. I’d never worked like that; I’d never had that kind of freedom before. And he was under a lot of pressure. Everyone had turned MASH down. One day, there was this scene where we were sitting by the brook after a long O.R. shift. Bob was doing a crane shot, and I was trying various things, but it was getting to close to the meal break, so we had to stop. He came up to me at lunch and said, “You’re ruining it for me. Why can’t you be like everybody else?” He was pointing to Corey Fischer. It was the worst thing anybody could say to me. I should conform to other people? Without even knowing myself? I blew up. I said, “You motherfucker! I’m not going to stick my neck out for you again!” It was probably around then that Donald and I complained about him. He’s said we tried to get him fired, but that wasn’t true.

Whom did you complain to?

Our agent. Donald and I had the same agent. But as soon as I yelled at him, Bob said, “I think I’ve made a mistake. I apologize.” And I said, “I accept.”

So it was about establishing a level of trust.

Oh, it was more than that. Even once we got to Long Goodbye, and even California Split. He used to say I scared him on Long Goodbye. Because I wasn’t just filling the space… I was putting stuff into it.

So when you’re in the middle of one of those trademark Altman scenes—a group, or a party, where everybody’s talking at once, and the camera’s drifting around—

I understood choreography. I started as a tap dancer.

Okay, well… how did Altman on the set compare to, say, Paul Mazursky?

I don’t compare things. What happened over the course of it was that Bob and I really became close. We went on to do a body of work. I said to him once, “Kurosawa had Toshiro Mifune; can I say I’m your Mifune?” He said, “Yes.”

Going back to the script: was it that everyone began by rehearsing the scenes as written, but the more you all riffed on it, the further it got away from what was on the page? Was the script even there on the set?

We had the script. See… this is something I thought about when Susan suggested I talk with you. You have an opinion. You have a view.

I’m just trying to be an observer.

Bob said in a magazine that he considered me an enemy. And I’m sure it was because he thought we tried to have him fired.

I heard him say that myself. It was at a Q & A following a screening of Gosford Park. He said you guys tried to have him fired, but that later you came to him and apologized, while Sutherland never did. Whatever the actual chain of events, is it fair to say there was some sparks between you initially, but later you came to an understanding?

In terms of me, that’s… that’s what I do. I’m not… in terms of peace of mind, and of being at peace… my relationship with Bob grew, and evolved.

You know, I wasn’t so impressed with MASH when we made it. I used to like Abbott & Costello. They did a movie about World War II; I thought we’d done something comparable. The big studio movie that was supposed to be it that year was Catch-22, which is considered an imperfect masterpiece—

Oh, I think it’s awful.

I remember when they sneak previewed MASH with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in San Francisco. I still wasn’t so impressed by it… but it went through the roof. And became this very special breakthrough picture.

And then suddenly I was doing a lot of work. Only I didn’t know I had no judgment! Or perspective. I just knew there were all these opportunities in front of me, and I could express myself, and I should try to do as much work as possible.

When did your perception of MASH start to change?

Over the last several years, as I study it, and what it’s about. Leonard Probst of NBC once asked me, “How do you define what’s funny?” Which I thought was far too general a question, so he named people like Woody Allen, and Neil Simon, and Chevy Chase—I thought, “Wow, Chevy Chase is in that group?” Anyway, the only answer I could give him was, “What’s real. That’s what’s funny.” He didn’t like that answer.

So after MASH, Bob did Brewster McCloud (1970), then he wanted me to do McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) with him. He sent me the novel, which Fox had bought for George C. Scott, but Bob wanted to do it with me and Pat Quinn. But one of my problems was that I thought we should choose the leading lady together. I also had a problem with his original script, which opened in the present day, then had a 360 degree camera turn, and the real story begins in the Old West.
At the same time, Paul Mazursky wanted me to do Alex in Wonderland, and the system was pushing me to do I Love My Wife at Universal. And I didn’t have the wisdom to just stop for a while and assess what I’d done, where I was, and how I could best evolve, as a presence on film. So I did I Love My Wife, which was a very formulaic comedy, but it was interesting to me because… well, my first marriage was breaking up… and my parents had a very troublesome marriage… I was interested in human relationships. I’d been in the dark so long, I thought I had some perceptions I could bring to it. A perspective. A vulnerability. I knew what it was to be a stupid being with a heart. So I turned down McCabe, and Bob said, “You’re making the biggest mistake of your life.” Then I got an offer from Ingmar Bergman, for The Touch, his first English-language picture. Do you know it?

No. I didn’t know Bergman made any films in English.

There were two or three. There’s going to be a screening of it at The Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater on November 22nd; you should come. Anyway, when it was finished, I showed it to Bob, and he said, “You don’t ever have to be better than you are here.” Bergman himself was very disappointed by it… not so much in terms of his artistry, but more in the way The Powers That Be presented it.

Then I didn’t work for quite some time. I finally had a meeting with David Picker, who was running United Artists, and he gave me the Leigh Brackett script of The Long Goodbye. I’d always loved the Humphrey Bogart pictures, but that first draft was set in the past. It was like a pastiche: very sweet, and very convoluted. But I needed a job. Peter Bogdanovich was set to direct—

That would have been a pastiche.

But he couldn’t see me in the part! Picker told me Bogdanovich thought I was too new; he wanted someone like Lee Marvin or Robert Mitchum. But Picker wanted me, so Bogdanovich left. Then Altman heard about it and called me. I told him I’d always wanted to play that guy, and he said, “You are that guy.” That was how it began. He asked me to read the novel, as well as Chandler on Chandler. I did, and discovered I was exactly the same age as the character, and the same height and weight.

I read The Long Goodbye about six months ago. It’s kind of hard to fathom. The movie really nails that elusive quality of it. And Marlowe is a pretty elusive character. How did you begin to imagine filling out the life of this guy?

Well, the guy has a life whether there’s a book or not. Then Bob called me and told me the whole opening of the film as he was envisioning it, the whole sequence with Marlowe and his cat. He loved that. He said, “This is what the picture is about!” More importantly, the story was now set in the present.

The Long Goodbye trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeNyD9UFXHs

The next thing was to cast the two main supporting roles, Roger and Eileen Wade. Bob wanted his friend Dan Blocker to play Roger, but then Blocker died… and not only did Bob not have any back-up in mind, he was actually thinking of dropping the project!

Dan Blocker was beloved by millions for playing Hoss in 394 episodes of Bonanza. Altman directed eight of them. He dedicated THE LONG GOODBYE to Blocker.

I thought we should go for John Huston… until Sterling Hayden showed up. My god, Sterling fucking Hayden! I had seen The Killing (1956) twelve or fifteen times; I knew Dr. Strangelove (1963) very well.

I wanted to meet him beforehand, so we sat down in that room in the house where we’d shoot it. He’d just come back from Ireland, where he’d been working with R. D. Laing, the famous psychiatrist and avant garde writer. So we talked,,, and I knew that Sterling knew—that I knew—that Sterling knew I understood him! I didn’t know Sterling had kidnapped his children, and went out to sea. He wrote a book about it. I didn’t know he’d fought with the underground in Yugoslavia during World War II.

Yeah, he was an OSS agent.

Then Bob wanted to test Nina Van Pallandt for Eileen, which I didn’t quite get, but… if that’s what the Old Man wanted, I would go along with it.

Van Pallandt had never acted before. Formerly half of a Danish folk duo, she shot to fame in the early 1970’s as the jet-set mistress of literary fraud Clifford Irving. She went on to appear in several other films, including American Gigolo (1980).

Which idea seemed crazier? That cat for ten minutes, or Nina Van Pallandt?

The cat for ten minutes wasn’t crazy at all. And Nina… no, nothing seemed crazy to me. We went to MGM to do the screen test, and pick out my wardrobe, which was a blue jacket, a mismatched pair of blue pants, a white shirt, and a tie. The tie was key to me. It was a red tie, with very tiny American flags. Which was really how I saw Marlowe: a very unorthodox patriot. I did a screen test with Nina; some written scenes, and some improvisation, and she was fine.

I didn’t want to bring this up until later, but I’ve actually been working for many years on the sequel to The Long Goodbye. It’s based on a short story of Chandler’s called “The Curtain.” I first had a treatment done, and sat with Bob while he read it, and he told Alan Ladd the only person he would to do it with was me. Now Alan Rudolph has written a script, and the working title is It’s Always Now. And it’s not that I have to do it, but that guy is still me. And now he’s of this age, but internally he’s still the same.

(Gould and Nina Van Pallandt in The Long Goodbye, above.)

Did you see Poodle Springs (1998)?

Poodle Springs sucked! Bob and I talked about it. Even with that wonderful British writer, Tom Stoppard, it was absolutely fucking horrible!

I asked because it depicts Marlowe as an older man. Would your sequel fit in that lineage?

No! It’s Always Now! It’s right now! Fucking Tom Stoppard… this isn’t for you! Nobody has cracked this yet. I’m being very candid with you here.

I thought Poodle Springs was adapted from Chandler’s last, unfinished story. Does “The Curtain” take place after “Poodle Springs?”

Aha. You have a very logical mind. No, “The Curtain” came very early, even before he wrote The Big Sleep. We took the story and moved it to the present day. It seems unlikely that I’ll actually get it made, but I’ve got everything in place, except for the money. The Chandler estate is supporting it. Because I played Marlowe once, I have their approval to play him again. They regard The Long Goodbye as the only film that properly represents Chandler, aside from the original films with Humphrey Bogart.

And it means a lot to me to have Alan Rudolph attached to direct. He was our 2nd Assistant Director on The Long Goodbye.

The last picture I saw of his was the one with Julie Christie. Afterglow.

That wasn’t Alan Rudolph.

Sure it was.

Okay, if you say so. I want to see Afterglow. I heard it’s really good.

She’s very good in it.

Originally, Bob and I had talked about doing a series, another Chandler/Marlowe story every other year, all set in the present. Right now, I know Clive Owen is trying to do Trouble is My Business with Frank Miller, but they haven’t cracked it. I think Marlowe should live in the same apartment he had in The Long Goodbye. The car I don’t think we need. That was my actual car, by the way. I thought it would be too obvious, Marlowe driving this old car, but Bob loved it. Eventually I gave it away, and now it’s on display at Harrah’s in Reno. I went to see it. They painted it canary yellow, and it’s parked next to the car James Dean drove in Rebel Without a Cause. I don’t want it now. I drive a Honda Civic.

Because there’s so little in The Long Goodbye about the larger circumstances of Marlowe’s life, did you create your own little biography, or backstory for the character?

When we were shooting the key scene in Ocean’s 11, where Clooney gets the whole gang together at my place, Steven Soderbergh walked up to me, and out of the blue asked, “The ink on the face. Was that an improvisation?” I’m just standing there, blindsided. Finally, he says, “You know, The Long Goodbye. It just seemed like such unexpected behavior.” And I told him, “That was the kind of space Robert Altman gave me.” That moment came out of the circumstances of the scene. The actor who was playing the detective really shoved me. I didn’t mind him “acting” rough with me, but he wasn’t acting. I still had that ink on my fingers, so I smeared it under my eyes, and said, “I’m getting ready for the big game.” Now I’m committed to that action. I didn’t know if Altman would like it, but I ran with it. So I went from “the big game” to mimicking Al Jolson. That’s an example of an improvised, irreverent moment. Another was when I brought up Ronald Reagan at the scene at the beach. I was a little drunk there, and I don’t really drink—

I was going to ask about that. Your voice actually goes up in pitch—

I was freaked out; I didn’t know what was going on. Until I look at her—and I don’t want to see it the way it wants to be seen, I want to see it for what it is. And she’s crying; being manipulative. All those cops are there, and they don’t know what going on. It wasn’t written that I throw a bottle through a window; it just came out in that moment. And the Old Man just let me fucking go!

It’s an amazing moment. The only time in the picture Marlowe really loses control.

Not the only time. I almost died on that beach!

You mean in the surf, just before that? It sure looks dangerous.

We did that at about three o’clock in the morning, to catch the high tide. My motivation was simple: I loved Sterling Hayden, and I wanted to save him. I was a pretty good athlete too, so I hit the water that first time, and I’m heading for those breakers… and it suddenly occurs to me that I’m not in a tank at some studio, this is the fucking Pacific Ocean! I’m fully dressed, I’m starting to breathe harder, I’m getting concerned; I’m starting to lose control! I looked to the shore, where the lights were, and the people looked so tiny. Then I’m in the breakers, and I couldn’t feel the bottom, my legs started turning to jelly, and my inner voice said to me—for the very first time, I heard it—it said, “You can’t go down, Elliott. There’s no one here to bring you back up.”

You see it plainly in the film. The camera’s so far back, you can see there’s no one out there with you.

It took every ounce of strength and will to pull myself out, and then I had to go up the beach right away and start acting that scene with Nina! And we had to shoot it another two times! I was standing under a hot shower between takes, thinking, “I almost drowned! I almost died!” So we did it a second time, and the third, and each time I came out and had to do that scene, I got a little hotter. And by the third time, man, it was like an out-of-body experience or something!
When I saw that footage in the dailies, you know what made me weep? When Roger’s dog, his Doberman, runs through the water holding his cane. I told Bob that was so fucking beautiful, it was like Da Vinci to me!

I was going to ask about Marlowe’s recurring line, “It’s okay with me.” That was something you improvised, and then it sort of became his catch phrase?

All that talking to himself was not in the script.

Were those after-dubs? It sounds like a lot of your muttering was added in later.

No, I was doing it as we made the picture. I said, “It’s okay with me” the very first day of shooting, and Bob loved it.

How did you come up with that trait, his muttering? It’s certainly one of the biggest differences between your Marlowe and Humphrey Bogart’s.

He was a guy who lived alone. When he wakes up, he’s like Rip Van Winkle. He has nobody to talk to, so he talks to himself! What does he know? Do you know Nina Foch? She’s a big acting teacher out here. She said to me once, “That picture would have been more successful if you had been quiet.”

Was that something you decided before you started shooting?

It all came out in the moments. Beginning to end. Right up until that final moment… which really recalls The Third Man, I think.

One of the things I love most about the ending is it finally turns “It’s okay with me” on its ear. All through the picture, the line implies that Marlowe doesn’t much care what other people do, but in that last moment, we finally see that in fact it’s not okay with him. He cares very much about what people do. So what you initially introduced as a toss-off becomes the crowning irony.

I remember when I first showed it to Donald Sutherland. When it came to the ending, he said, “Oh, I see. It’s all about morality.” The fact that this film has survived, and endured, and come to be considered something of a classic… it’s very gratifying.


Original trailer for The Long Goodbye.

Can we briefly touch on California Split (1974), the third and final Altman film you starred in?

California Split was originally supposed to star Steve McQueen, even though the story was drawn from my own life. The guy I lived with back then, Joseph Walsh, he wrote the picture, produced it with Bob, and played the bookmaker. In real life, I was Bill, the character George Segal played, and Joseph was Charlie, the character I played. I used to gamble, and that story was basically our story.

Wow. So that guy pulled you into gambling?

I don’t blame anybody for anything.

Well, in the picture, Charlie is clearly this ne’er-do-well who drags Bill, a pretty square guy, into that very seedy world.

Right. Anyway, McQueen was insisting on rewrites that didn’t exist, so Bob called me, and I was happy to do it. I would’ve done anything he asked me to.

CALIFORNIA SPLIT clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZ_NUqLwvHQ

It’s a sad piece. I’ve seen it twice, and it just made me… well, sad. I don’t know what it is… and, man, it just nails that vibe of 1974—only in 1974 would you get a movie like California Split!

Yeah. It is sad. But funny. Again, because it’s real, y’know? God, I loved the Old Man. And we became such good friends. He was like a father to me.
####

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Bent Hamer returns with O'HORTEN, an off-beat character journey - Norwegian-style.

(Actor Bard Owe in O'Horten, above, and director Bent Hamer, below.)

by Terry Keefe

Note: This article is currently appearing in this month's VENICE MAGAZINE.

Norwegian director Bent Hamer has just come back from a walk around the beach in Venice and eagerly relates, “I just saw this house on the beach and it had a sign which said, ‘Hippies, please use kitchen entrance!’” Hamer then laughs, captivated by this little glimmer of absurdity he has discovered. The sign in question actually wouldn’t be out of place in a Bent Hamer film, which are known for mixing visual oddities of the everyday with characters and plots which keep the overall film grounded in reality, somewhat anyway. We last spoke when he was releasing Kitchen Stories in 2004, the story of which was inspired by the real-life studies done by a Swedish kitchen appliance company in the late 1940s, specifically centering upon the journey of a Swedish researcher who is sent to live with an aging Norwegian bachelor to document his kitchen habits. One of the most memorable images from Kitchen Stories was the towering high chair that the researcher sits upon in the bachelor’s kitchen, to separate himself from his subject. At the same time, the plot movement focuses on the subject and researcher bonding, almost buddy-style, and it was this spine that allowed Hamer to simultaneously explore the inherent ridiculousness of kitchen research, without spinning off into total farce.

(The high chair in Kitchen Stories, below.)

Hamer’s newest feature film is O’Horten, which is essentially a character study about a recent retiree, a train engineer named Odd Horten (played by Bard Owe), who suddenly finds himself with too much time on his hands and falls into a series of minor misadventures, all with a slightly absurdist tinge. O’Horten is a sort of About Schmidt-style, coming-to-age tale, if it had been visualized by Magritte. O’Horten is marked by a number of striking images: a POV shot of someone going down a seemingly unmonitored ski jump at night; a businessman willingly sliding down an iced-over road because it is too difficult to walk on; and another POV shot from the engineer’s seat of a train going through a tunnel, amongst many others, and so it comes as little surprise that Hamer constructed his story with various images such as these in mind. Says Hamer of his scripting process, “It was very unlike Kitchen Stories, which was centered so much on a concept. With Kitchen Stories, I worked from the inside, to my way out, around a very focused idea. But this time, I had to piece it together, and I started from the outside with a lot of loose ends, and then tried to find the center. It was a very different approach for me, this writing. I didn’t always know where to go.” He then adds with a laugh, “Sort of like Odd Horten on his journey!"

Hamer’s last film, Factotum, was actually shot in the United States, starred Matt Dillon and Marisa Tomei, and was adapted from a book by Charles Bukowski. Although he appears to be very open to working here again, Hamer has also managed to develop a worldwide audience with largely character-driven films such as O’Horten, and Kitchen Stories, which have visuals and elements that feel very specific to Norwegian, or at least Scandinavian, culture. Some of my own pleasures derived from O’Horten included the travelogue-style elements of seeing what was unquestionably actual ice falling from the sky in several shots, and the different styles of dress, not to mention faces, in small-town Norway. There is a lesson here for filmmakers that all you need to find a large audience might already be in your backyard. Hamer nods vigorously when presented with this statement and expounds, “People talk about ‘big’ films. What is a ‘big’ film? There is some connotation there I don’t understand. What it’s all about is if you can recognize something which is universal and specific in a film. Of course, you can talk about pure entertainment, but hopefully there’s something more than that.”

O’Horten opens this month via Sony Pictures Classics.

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DVD Playhouse--May 2009

DVD PLAYHOUSE—MAY 2009
By
Allen Gardner

PARAMOUNT CENTENNIAL COLLECTION Paramount Studios releases two more classic titles from its library on special edition DVD: THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE is John Ford’s last masterpiece (although he would go on to direct two more very good films) from 1962: about an Eastern lawyer (James Stewart) who travels west only to find primal brutality in the form of sadistic bandit Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin, great as always) and pragmatic brutality in local rancher Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), each two sides of a coin that represent a way of life slowly dying out as Stewart’s modern brand of civilization tames the West. A perfect film, period. Howard Hawks’ EL DORADO is essentially a remake of his earlier classic Rio Bravo, with John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and a young James Caan as lawmen joining forces against corrupt cattle barons. Great fun. Two disc sets. Bonuses on both: Commentary by filmmaker Peter Bogdanovich and film scholars, as well as archival recordings of Stewart, Wayne, Ford and Marvin on Liberty Valance; Selected scene commentary from Dan Ford, son of John Ford, on El Dorado; Featurettes; Trailers. Photo and publicity galleries. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono.
THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE (Criterion) Peter Yates’ downbeat study of working class hoods in Boston is one of the finest hours of American crime cinema in the ‘70s. Robert Mitchum stars as a dim-witted, low-level crook who finds himself quickly in over his head after being implicated in a local bank job, and facing a second stretch in prison. Fine support from Richard Jordan, Peter Boyle, and Steven Keats—all fine actors, now sadly no longer with us. Fine, spare screenplay by Paul Monash, from George V. Higgins’ novel. Bonuses: Commentary by Yates; Stills gallery; Booklet with essay by critic Kent Jones and Grover Lewis’ 1973 interview with Mitchum for Rolling Stone, from the film’s set. Widescreen. Dolby 1.0 mono.
WISE BLOOD (Criterion) John Huston’s sober, poetic adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s novel about an eccentric young preacher (Brad Dourif) who attempts to open the first Church Without Christ in a small Southern town. Fascinating mediation on faith, spirituality and madness, with Huston (billed either erroneously or with tongue firmly in-cheek as “Jhon Huston”) making a nice cameo as a minister. Bonuses: Interviews with Dourif, writer Benedict Fitzgerald and writer/producer Michael Fitzgerald; Archival recording of O’Connor reading her short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find”; 1982 episode of Creativity with Bill Moyers on Huston; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 1.0 mono.
PIGS, PIMPS & PROSTITUTES: 3 FILMS BY SHOEI IMAMURA (Criterion) One of the leaders of the Japanese New Wave in the 1960s, Shoei Imamura’s films blended biting social and political commentary with a kitchen sink sensibility and more than a touch of the surreal. PIGS AND BATTLESHIPS tells the story of a doomed young couple, one a hungry Yakuza who gets a job on an American military base supervising the pig pen, all the while subverting the food scraps to his clan in the black market, while his girlfriend, urging the boy to go straight, finds herself drawn into petty thievery and eventually, prostitution. Strong stuff for 1961. THE INSECT WOMAN follows the ordeal of a woman in pre, present, and post-war Japan, each era having a marked and extreme affect on her life and situation. Bleak, haunting character study and commentary on the disintegration of a country’s character and identity. INTENTIONS OF MURDER follows a woman’s downward spiral after being told by her mother that their family are the victims of a curse. Imamura expertly blends Hitchcockian suspense, sexual violence and his signature social commentary. Bonuses: Interview with Imamura by Japanese critic Tadao Sato; Episode of French series Cinema de Norte Temps on Imamura; Interviews with critic and historian Tony Rayns on all three films. Widescreen. Dolby 1.0 mono.
TAKING CHANCE (HBO Films) Simple, but powerful story about a U.S. Marine Lt. Col. (Kevin Bacon) who volunteers to escort the body of a young Marine killed in Iraq who grew up in the same hometown in Wyoming. Bacon’s Picaresque journey across the heartland provides a sobering, and affecting, view of war and the impact it has on individual lives. Based on a true story. Bonuses: Featurettes; Interviews; Deleted scene. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
WENDY AND LUCY (Oscilloscope Pictures) A homeless woman (Michelle Williams)’s car breaks down in the Pacific Northwest. When her beloved dog goes missing, Williams searches relentlessly for her companion, encountering kindness, indifference, and other lost souls, before finally achieving a strange sort of redemption. Moving, spare and poetic portrait of pain, loss and acceptance. Fine work by cast and crew alike. Bonuses: Collection of shorts from Bard College film students. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
LOOK (Anchor Bay) Shot entirely on surveillance cameras, director Adam Rifkin's pointed social satire/commentary follows a diverse group of Angelinos who committ a variety of sins, some minor and some major, all while under varying degrees of eyewitness by the modern equivalent of Orwell's Big Brother. Thought-provoking exercise takes some time to gather steam, but once it does, it's riveting in the most voyeuristic, uncomfortable way: director Rifkin very cleverly makes his audience complicit in the goings-on. Bonuses: Featurettes; Commentary by Rifkin, cast and crew; Outtakes: TV spots and trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
THE WRESTLER (20th Century Fox) Mickey Rourke was the comeback story of the year in ’08 with his stunning portrait of Randy “the Ram” Robinson, a washed-up pro wrestler who peaked in the ‘80s and finds that life, and his battered body, have caught up with him. There is nary a hint of the eye candy that director Darren Aronofsky made his name with in this neo-realist gem, a mournful dirge to lost souls and dreams that refuse to die. Fine support from Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood. Also available on Blu-ray disc. 2 disc set bonuses include: Featurettes; Bruce Springsteen video; Digital copy of the film. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround.
LAST CHANCE HARVEY (Anchor Bay/Overture) Dustin Hoffman plays an aging jingle composer who travels to London for his estranged daughter’s wedding, where he finds a kindred spirit in Emma Thompson’s poll-taker during a random encounter at Heathrow Airport. Hoffman and Thompson have terrific chemistry and are great fun to watch, but the material seems unworthy of their starpower or a major feature film, and more akin to something you’d find on the Lifetime network on a Sunday night. Classic example of a film that is “a rental.” Also available on Blu-ray disc. Two disc set bonuses: Commentary by writer/director Joel Hopkins, Thompson and Hoffman; Featurette; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
NOTORIOUS (20th Century Fox) Mostly-successful biopic about rapper Notorious B.I.G. (aka Christopher Wallace), focusing primarily on his formative years in Brooklyn, where he was raised by a caring mother (Angela Bassett, excellent) studying for her Master’s and found himself seduced by the crack trade, in spite of an obvious talent as a writer and musician. When rap mogul Sean Combs (Derek Luke) hears B.I.G.’s demo tape, he signs the lad at age 20 and what begins with a meteoric rise ends in a hail of bullets four years later. Has much in common with the old Warner Bros. gangster pictures like Angels with Dirty Faces: you can take a kid off the streets, but you can’t take the streets out of the kid. Director George Tillman, Jr. wisely avoids the pitfalls of most film biographies in that he doesn’t attempt to cover more ground than two hours of screen time can handle. Director’s cut contains an extra six minutes of footage. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Commentary by Tillman and crew; Biggie’s mom, Voletta Wallace, Biggie’s managers; Featurettes; Concert footage; Deleted scenes; Digital copy of the film. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround.
SCHWARZENEGGER: 4-FILM COLLECTOR’S SET (Lionsgate/Republic) Four of the Governator’s biggest action hits of the ‘80s and early ‘90s: TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY is writer/director James Cameron’s full-throttle sequel to his 1984 hit about a killer cyborg (Robert Patrick) sent from the future to assassinate a boy (Edward Furlong) who will grow to be a revolutionary leader. This time, Arnold plays the good Terminator, who is programmed to stop the assassin. Linda Hamilton redefined the role of women in action films with her muscular (literally and figuratively) portrait of Furlong’s mother, Sarah Connor. TOTAL RECALL is director Paul Verhoeven’s darkly comic sci-fi tale about a man (Arnold) who wakes up to find that his memory has been stolen, and is haunted by obsessive dreams set on the planet Mars. RED HEAT is the lone turkey of the bunch, a tired re-hash by director Walter Hill of his own 48 Hrs. formula, pairing obnoxious Chicago cop Jim Belushi with uptight Russian detective Arnold, as they team to take down a Russian drug dealer who’s taken refuge in the windy city. THE RUNNING MAN is a fun, albeit cheesy, sci-fi adventure take on the old Most Dangerous Game formula about a futuristic TV game show where the contestants are hunted to the death by a crew of colorful assassins. Think Roger Corman with a budget! All are widescreen, Dolby 5.1 surround. Bonuses include: Filmmaker and crew commentary; Featurettes; Deleted scenes; Trailers.
TWO BY OSHIMA Criterion releases controversial Japanese director Nagisa Oshima’s films IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES, based on the true story of a torrid, 1930’s-era affair between a well-to-do businessman (Tatsuya Fuji) and one of his servant girls (Eiko Matsuda) that ended in murder. Unparalleled (particularly for the mid-70s) portrait of sexual obsession and addiction is a real mixed bag. At turns beautiful, quite erotic, and then downright difficult to take, as its constant barrage of graphic, unsimulated sexual aberrance becomes tiresome and redundant. At the end this writer found himself asking “What’s the point?” Bonuses: Commentary by critic Tony Rayns; Interview with Fuji; 1976 interview with Oshima, Fuji and Matsuda; 2003 interviews with crew members; Deleted scenes; U.S. trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 1.0 mono. EMPIRE OF PASSION is an intriguing mixture of eroticism, suspense and supernatural thriller as an adulterous couple in 19th century Japan murder the woman’s husband, and dispose of his body down the local well, only to find themselves haunted by his spirit. As with most of Oshima’s work, this film will not be to everyone’s taste, but its skillful execution earned him a Best Director award at Cannes in 1978. Bonuses: Video essay on Oshima by Catherine Russell; Interviews with cast and crew; U.S. trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 1.0 mono.
SCIENCE IS FICTION: 23 FILMS BY JEAN PAINLEVE (Criterion) Amazing collection of short films by a one-of-a-kind filmmaker. Painleve combined surrealism, hard science and documentary precision to create a series of science-based films unlike any seen before or since. Subject matter ranges from astronomy to pigeons to, most famously, marine-life such as the sea horse and sea urchin. Three disc collection also includes the eight-part French TV series Jean Painleve Through His Films, and rock band Yo La Tengo’s eight-film score The Sounds of Science. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo.
THE HIT (Criterion) Stephen Frears’ revisionist take on the British gangster genre features Terence Stamp as Willie, a “supergrass” (Cockney slang for informer or rat) living a seemingly-anonymous life in rural Spain after dropping a dime on his gangster friends years earlier. When two hit men (John Hurt, Tim Roth) arrive on his doorstep to bring Willie back home to be served his just desserts, a road trip occurs like no other captured on film. Deft mixture of humor, character study and nail-biting suspense, with a knockout performance by then-unknown Spanish actress Laura Del Sol. Bonuses: Commentary by Frears, Hurt, Roth, writer Peter Prince, editor Mick Audsley; 1988 interview with Stamp; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 1.0 mono.
CLASSIC MUSICALS MGM/Fox release three classic song-and-dance titles, all in early Technicolor, from the ‘30s and ‘40s: A SONG IS BORN stars Danny Kaye as a bookish professor who finds himself falling for gorgeous gun moll Virginia Mayo, on the lam from the cops and hiding out in Kaye’s research institute. Much music and merriment ensue. THE GOLDWYN FOLLIES stars Adolphe Menjou as a powerful movie producer whose films have lost touch with the common man. To get the pulse of the public back into his work, Menjou hires country girl Andrea Leeds as an advisor, and soon finds himself falling for her. IT’S A PLEASURE stars skating star Sonja Henie as (what else) a famous ice skater who tries to redeem her true love, a hockey star (Dan O’Shea) with a drinking problem and a temper to go with it. All three are full screen, Dolby 1.0 mono.
THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON (Criterion/Paramount) David Fincher directs Eric Roth’s adaptation of an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story about a man who finds himself aging in reverse. Brad Pitt stars as Benjamin, who finds himself abandoned on the steps of a New Orleans rooming house at the turn of the century as a baby who has the physical makeup of a man in his ‘80s. As time passes and Benjamin grows larger physically and younger physiologically, he embarks on a Picaresque life adventure, finding war, intrigue, romance, true love, and an odd kind of epiphany in the end. Technically-dazzling film has everything going for it: a fine cast (Pitt, Tilda Swinton, Cate Blanchett, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Ormand), knockout production design and cinematography, everything but emotional resonance and a character with whom we can empathize. It’s Forrest Gump without the heart. Too bad, considering the who’s-who of talent in front of and behind the camera, but still worth a look for its eye-popping use of state-of-the-art effects. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Two-disc set bonuses: Interviews with cast and crew; Commentary by Fincher; Featurettes; Still galleries; Essay by critic Kent Jones. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
GALAXY QUEST: DELUXE EDITION (Paramount) Tenth anniversary release of the clever sci-fi spoof about the cast of a Star Trek-like former hit TV show that suddenly finds itself exploring brave new worlds in outer space when an embattled alien race beams them aboard their starship for aid, thinking their television adventures were real. Very smart, very funny film earns top marks by playing it for real, rather than for yucks. Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub and Sam Rockwell round out a fine cast. Bonuses: Featurettes; Deleted scenes; Thermian audio track; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
JUST ANOTHER LOVE STORY (Koch-Lorber) Intriguing film noir import from Denmark about a police photographer who becomes obsessed with a woman whose life he saves after a car crash. Blinded from her injuries, she mistakes him for her mysterious lover, an enigmatic figure with a shady past. Echoes of Antonioni’s The Passenger and some of the sleaziest film noirs of the ‘40s and ‘50s abound in this dazzling little film from uber-talented writer-director Ole Borendal. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
BRIDE WARS (20th Century Fox) Two BFFs (Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway) find that they planned their dream weddings on the same date and time at New York’s famed Plaza Hotel. Friendship turns into a battle royale as each tries to undo the other’s plans with increasingly nasty tactics. Sometimes, from the first frame, you know a film is just going to suck. This writer got that horrible, pit-of-the-stomach groan the moment the opening narration from Candice Bergen’s wedding coordinator filled the 5.1 surround speakers. With A-list talent (particularly Hathaway) like this headlining a film, this is the best the screenwriters and directors could do? Lazy, big-studio moviemaking at its worst. A real let-down, even for the chick flick genre (and I have several chicks who will back me up on this). Also available on Blu-ray disc. 3 disc set bonuses include: Featurettes; Deleted scenes; Improvisations; Interviews with cast members; Pop-up trivia track; Digital copy of the film. Widescreen. Dolby and DTS 5.1 surround.
DOCUMENTARY TITLES A&E releases a magnificent six-disc box set of THE NEW YORK YANKEES: PERFECT GAMES AND NO-HITTERS, featuring six historic Yankees games: Don Larsen’s 1956 World Series, game 5 vs. Brooklyn; Dave Righetti July 4, 1983 vs. Boston; Jim Abbott September 4, 1993 vs. Cleveland; Dwight Gooden May 14, 1996 vs. Seattle; David Wells May 17, 1998 vs. Minnesota and David Cone July 18, 1999 vs. Montreal. Bonuses: Featurettes; Interviews with the players; Radio calls on Don Larsen’s perfect game. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. COLUMBUS CREW 2008: MLS CUP CHAMPIONS, features highlights from the team’s championship season, including Argentine sensation Guillermo Barros Schelotto being named MLS MVP and MLS Defender of the Year Chad Marshall dominating the field. A must for soccer fans. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. MVD releases DEPECHE MODE: THE DARK PROGRESSION, a comprehensive look into one of the '80s most influential New Wave bands, from their early years flirting with New Romanticism, to their peak in the mid-90s. Fascinating, and a must for fans. Bonuses: Extra interviews. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. BLACK HOLLYWOOD was shot entirely on location in Tinseltown, circa 1984, where a vareity of African-American actors such as Alfre Woodard, Rosiland Cash, Jim Brown and Vonetta McGee speak out about the tough road Black actors faced in show business during the pre-Spike Lee era. Fascinating time capsule, still relevant today. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. BILLIE HOLIDAY: THE LIFE AND ARTISTRY OF LADY DAY, takes a sad, sobering look at the tragic life of the eponymous blues legend, through archival footage, photographs and her own music. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Live Nation releasesBARBARA STREISAND: THE CONCERTS, a three disc collection featuring the premiere release of Live in Concert 2006, with special guest Il Divo, and the DVD premiere of The Concert—Live at Arrowhead Pond, Anaheim, July 1994. The third bonus disc features the documentary Putting it Together: The Broadway Album, as well as bonus tracks from Streisand’s TV specials dating from 1965-73. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Full and widescreen. DTS 5.1 surround and PCM stereo. Microcinema releases A FILM IS A BURNING PLACE: WORKS BY ENID BAXTERBLADER, a compilation of experimental shorts and videos from artist, musician, filmmaker Enid Baxter Blader. Intriguing works from an artist with a unique voice. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. GRACE HARTIGAN: SHATTERING BOUNDARIES provides an intimate portrait of one of the key figures in the abstract expressionist movement in American art, who studied under such icons as Jackson Pollock and Willem deKooning. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Indiepix releases JACK TAYLOR OF BEVERLY HILLS a fascinating time capsule that explores the life and times of Tinseltown’s most revered tailor to the stars. Taylor is a charming raconteur, whose stories of Hollywood’s golden age are only matched by his grace with a pair of scissors and spool of cloth. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Filmmaker commentary. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Rosforth releases INSIDE OUTSIDE, an intriguing look at the world of graffiti art and how different cultures both celebrate and revile the genre. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. Cinevolve releases A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY: 10th ANNIVERSARY EDITION, a look at the Star Wars phenomenon and the fervent fan base that has remained loyal to the film series over the decades. Funny, fascinating, and more than a little sad at times. Bonuses: Trailers; Coming attractions; New audio commentary; Interviews with the filmmakers; Deleted scenes; Original DVD commentary. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 surround. Acorn Media releases APOLLO 11: A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, a recollection from the BBC archives that recalls man’s first steps on the moon. Fun, thrilling and even a bit campy at times (the technology looks positively prehistoric by today’s standards). Bonuses: Episode from the BBC series The Sky at Night. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Cinelove releases THE TOWN THAT WAS, a harrowing true story about the small coal-mining town of Centralia, PA., that continues to burn after a 1962 trash fire ignited a seam of anthracite coal under the town's surface, and the 11 die-hard residents that remain there today, in spite of being surrounded by deadly plumes of carbon monoxide gas and other health hazards. Bonuses: Extra interviews; Home movies; Featurettes; Photo gallery; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.
BLU-RAY TITLES More of film and TV’s biggest names arrive on Blu-ray high-definition this month. Universal releases CHILDREN OF MEN, Alfonso Cuaron's brilliant sci-fi/political thriller about a man (Clive Owen) in the year 2027, when humans have lost the ability to reproduce, who is entrusted with the life of a young pregnant woman who carries the last hope of survival for humanity. Michael Caine is wonderful in support. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; Featuretttes; Blu-ray features, including Picture-in-Picture interative elements. Spike Lee's thriller INSIDE MAN stars Denzel Washington, Clive Owen and Jodie Foster in an ingenious caper film with Owen leading a high-tech bank robbery and Washington the savvy NYPD detective who plays an intense game of cat-and-mouse with his prey. Bonuses: Commentary by Lee; Deleted scenes; Featurettes. FIELD OF DREAMS is Phil Alden Robinsn's magical realism classic about an Iowa farmer (Kevin Costner) who finds that his corn field is inhabited with the ghosts of baseball's greatest golden age players, and erects a diamond for them to play for eternity. Smart, funny and touching film holds up beautifully after 20 years. Bonuses: Deleted scenes with introduction by Robinson; Featurettes; Interviews with Costner and baseball stars; Commentary by Robinson and D.P. John Lindley. FLETCH is a comedy classic from the '80s starring Chevy Chase as a wisecracking, but intrepid, reporter who uncovers a massive conspiracy involving drug running and murder. Nice blend of comedy and thriller from the late, great Michael Ritchie. Bonuses: Featurettes. SEABISCUIT is an elegiac look at the racehorse who gave Depression-era America a boost in morale, and the jockey (Tobey Maguire) whose hard-luck story mirrored that of his steed. Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper, and William H. Macy round out a fine cast. Bonuses: Featurettes; Commentary by director Gary Ross and Steven Soderbergh. CINDERELLA MAN is director Ron Howard's spot-on biopic of boxer Jim Braddock, and his rags-to-riches journey, from Depression-era washed-up has-been, to heavyweight champion. Renee Zellweger shines in support as Braddock's patient wife. Bonuses: Commentary by Howard, writers Akiva Goldsman, Cliff Hollingsworth; Archival fight footage; Photo gallery. Featurettes; Deleted scenes. Brad Pitt and Robert Redford headline director Tony Scott's SPY GAME, a mostly-successful political thriller about a CIA agent (Pitt) in deep trouble behind enemy lines, and his control agent (Redford), scrambling to get him home. Bonuses: Deleted and alternate scenes with commentary by Scott; Featurettes; Storyboards. All are widescreen. DTS 5.1 surround. Paramount releases the coming-of-age classic FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF, starring Matthew Broderick as the eponymous Chicago high schooler whose ingenious plan to ditch school for a day of adventure in the city with his girlfriend (Mia Sara) and best pal (Alan Ruck) causes a chain reaction of events that can best be described as cataclysmic. Writer/director John Hughes’ finest hour in the teen movie genre. Bonuses: Five featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround.THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR is the late, great Sydney Pollack's paranoid political thriller about a low-level CIA analyst (Robert Redford) who returns to his office from lunch, only to find his section wiped out and himself a hunted man. One of the great '70s thrillers, bolstered by a dream cast: Faye Dunaway, John Houseman, Cliff Robertson, and Max Von Sydow as the silkiest assassin in film history. Bonuses: Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. STAR TREK THE ORIGINAL SERIES: SEASON 1, features all of the 1966-67 season with both original and enhanced special effects, as well as original mono soundtrack or remastered Dolby 7.1 surround. 7 disc set bonuses include: Rare home movies from behind the scenes; Featurettes; Picture-in-picture interviews; Pop up trivia. Full screen. DEXTER: THE SECOND SEASON, features more grisly adventures of Miami’s very own do-gooding serial killer, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) who uses his sociopathic tendencies to rid Dade County of its foulest denizens. Features all 12 episodes of the second season, revolving around the FBI’s investigation of the city’s newest serial killer, dubbed “The Bay Harbor Butcher” by the press. Smart, funny and not for the faint-of-heart. Bonuses: Featurettes; Podcasts; United States of Tara episodes. Widescreen. Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. Sony releases THE DA VINCI CODE: EXTENDED CUT, starring Tom Hanks in Ron Howard’s film of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel about intrigue and cover-ups in the highest ranks of the Catholic Church. Features an extra 25 minutes of footage that helps flesh out the story more than the theatrical cut did. Bonuses: 17 featurettes; Interactive picture-in-picture features; Cinechat; Trailers. Widescreen. Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. THE SKY CRAWLERS, is an impressive piece of Japanese anime from director Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), which spins the sci-fi tale of fighter pilots who seem gifted with eternal youth and near-indestructibility. Dazzling for the eyes and the brain alike. Bonuses: Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. UNDERWORLD: RISE OF THE LYCANS, is the prequel to the first two films of the Underworld series, tracing the origins of the centuries-old blood feud between vampires and werewolves. Michael Sheen and Bill Nighy reprise their roles from the first two films. Bonuses: Featurettes; Music video; Filmmaker commentary; Cinechat; Picture-in-picture features; Interactive map. Widescreen. Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. THE GRUDGE, stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as an American nurse in Tokyo who finds herself facing off against a vengeful supernatural spirit that claims the souls of its victims. Unrated version is far superior to the watered-down PG-13 version (both available here), and truer to the Japanese original on which it’s based. Bonuses: Commentary by cast and crew; Deleted scenes; Featurettes; Short films. Widescreen. Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU, is a fun “feel good” romantic comedy about a cop (Nicolas Cage) who unwittingly leaves a waitress (Bridget Fonda) a $2 million tip when he leaves a lottery ticket in lieu of cash. Loosely based on a true story. Widescreen. Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. ROXANNE, is star/screenwriter Steve Martin’s smart, romantic modern take on Cyrano de Bergerac, with Martin as the fire chief of a Colorado rocky mountain ville who is cursed with a prominent proboscis, and Darryl Hannah the love of his life, who only has eyes for hunky firefighter Rick Rossovich. If only all romantic comedies were this good! Widescreen. Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround. Lionsgate releases MY BLOODY VALENTINE 3-D, , a competent, but unnecessary remake of the 1981 original, which is now regarded a slasher film classic. A rural mining town finds its denizens being picked off one Valentine’s Day—the tenth anniversary of a miner who ran amuck and killed 22 people with his pickaxe. Decent 3-D effects enhance over-the-top gore (if you like that sort of thing). Comes with 2-D version of the film as well, plus 4 pair of 3-D glasses for all you purists out there. Bonuses: Commentary by filmmakers; Featurettes; Gag reel; Alternate ending; BD-Live features; Widescreen. DTS 7.1 surround.
DON’T TOUCH THAT DIAL! Paramount releases THE BEST OF STAR TREK THE ORIGINAL SERIES, , featuring the classic episodes “The City on the Edge of Forever” written by Harlan Ellison, “The Trouble With Tribbles,” “Balance of Terror,” and “Amok Time.” THE BEST OF STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION, , features the episodes “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I and II,” “Yesterday’s Existence,” and “The Measure of a Man.” Both are Full screen. Dolby 5.1 surround. The ACTION PACKED COLLECTION features episodes of the classic series WALKER TEXAS RANGER, NCIS, MACGYVER, and MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround. The FOREVER FUNNY COLLECTION features classic episodes of I LOVE LUCY, THE ODD COUPLE, THE HONEYMOONERS, TAXI, THE BRADY BUNCH, FRASIER, and CHEERS. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono and stereo. GUNSMOKE THE THIRD SEASON, VOL. 2, features 3 discs containing 20 action-packed episodes of the show’s 1958 season, starring James Arness as Tombstone Marshall Matt Dillon. Bonuses: Original sponsor spots. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. THE MOD SQUAD SEASON TWO, VOL. 2 features more groovy, late ‘60s crime fighting from the hippest young undercover cops in L.A. 3 disc set contains 13 episodes. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. JO KOY: DON’T MAKE HIM ANGRY, features the young comic’s Comedy Central special, where he talks about road rage, family foibles and does some truly amazing impressions. Bonuses: Extra performances. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. RUSSELL BRAND IN NEW YORK CITY features the Brit comic sensation in a no-holds-barred performance in The Big Apple, where no topic is off-limits for his extreme sense of humor! Bonuses: Extra routines, including his notorious MTV VMA monologue. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. JAKE AND THE FATMAN, SEASON TWO features more adventure from former prosecutor William Conrad and intrepid detective Joe Penny, this time relocating their efforts from L.A. to Hawaii. 3-disc set. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. PENN & TELLER B.S., THE COMPLETE SIXTH SEASON, features all six episodes of the Showtime hit where the comics/magicians work their unique brand of entertainment. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. Lionsgate releases WEEDS: SEASON FOUR featuring the continuing adventures of marijuana entrepeneur/suburban mom Nancy Botwin (Mary Louise Parker), now relocated close to the Mexican border. Smart, sexy stuff. Bonuses: Gag reel; Cast and crew commentary; Featurettes. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN: HEROES RETURN TRILOGY, featuring the animated adventures of Marvel’s greatest superheroes. Bonuses: Featurettes; Filmmaker/animator commentary. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. 8 SIMPLE RULES: THE COMPLETE 2nd SEASON, follows Katey Sagal’s family after the passing of their father (the late John Ritter) with James Garner and David Spade joining the cast. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. Two WILL & GRACE collections: BEST OF FRIENDS & FOES and BEST OF LOVE & MARRIAGE are released, each featuring 2 discs and 16 episodes, with highlights of the hit comedy’s fan-chosen favorites. Bonuses: Featurettes. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: SEASON 7, PART 4, features six episodes of the animated hit series, plus a collectible action figure. Bonuses: Interviews with fans. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. SPEED RACER THE NEXT GENERATION: COMET RUN—THE MOVIE, is a new animated feature with the whole Speed Racer gang, now gone green, doing battle against an environmentally-unfriendly billionaire (is there any other kind), Zile Zazic. Full screen. Dolby 5.1 surround. Acorn Media releases JEEVES & WOOSTER: THE COMPLETE SERIES starring the legendary British team of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry as a dim-witted man of means and his trusted valet, respectively. 8 DVDs contain all 23 episodes of the classic series, a landmark in British TV that made stars of both its leads. Bonuses: P.G. Woodehouse biography/filmography. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. A VILLAGE AFFAIR, which tells the touching story of a forbidden love affair between two women in a small English village. Bonuses: Cast filmographies. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. MURDER MOST ENGLISH features all seven episodes of the mini-series about a dogged detective (Anton Rodgers) battling the evil that lurks beneath the surface of his small English town. Think a British “Columbo” and you’ll get the idea. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. THE INVISIBLES, PART 1 & 2, tells the story of former crooks (Warren Clarke and Anthony Head) who return to their native England, determined to go straight, only to find themselves drawn back to their old ways. Nice blend of laughs and drama. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. MURDOCH MYSTERIES: SEASON ONE, is a four-disc set of 13 episodes about a Victorian-era detective who uses ingenious (for the 19th century) scientific methods to solve crimes. Bonuses: Commentary by cast and crew; Interviews with the author and cast; Photo gallery; Filmographies. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. NUMBER 10 is a fascinating 7-part mini-series about Prime Ministers who’ve occupied 10 Downing Street over the years, from William Gladstone (Denis Quilley) to William Pitt the Younger (the late, great Jeremy Brett), spanning the Napoleonic era to the 1920s. Bonuses: Bios of the Prime Ministers. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. BLUE MURDER: SET 4, stars Caroline Quentin as Manchester’s top detective who struggles to balance her crime-solving brilliance with her role as wife and mother. Six episodes. Widescreen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. Universal releases the first, and only season of MY OWN WORST ENEMY a clever idea that has Christian Slater doing double duty as a suburban dad and a superspy, neither of whom knows the other exists! Clever play on Total Recall. Too bad it didn’t have a chance to develop. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. LIPSTICK JUNGLE: SEASON TWO stars Brooke Shields as an ambitious career woman trying to juggle family and career, and her two pals Nico and Victoria, both career women with their own issues. Smart writing, strong performances. Another victim of cancellation. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS: THE THIRD SEASON features all 13 episodes of the hit series centering around life in small town Texas and the denizens’ love of high school football. Bonuses: Deleted scenes; 13 minutes of a “lost storyline”; Commentary by cast and crew. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. CRUSOE: THE COMPLETE SERIES, is a terrific retelling of Daniel Defoe’s classic novel about an adventurer (Philip Winchester) who finds himself shipwrecked on a uncharted island. Fine support from the great Sam Neill. Bonuses: Copy of the Defoe novel. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. GENE RODDENBERRY’S EARTH: FINAL CONFLICT-- SEASON ONE features all 22 episodes of the late Star Trek creator’s series about an uneasy alliance between 21st century humans and a race of alien “visitors.” Bonuses: Introduction from Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry; Roddenberry’s philosophy; Commentary by cast and crew. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. SHOUT! Factory releases THE DANA CARVEY SHOW, a short-lived but very smart sketch series featuring the SNL vet as well as soon-to-be famous names like Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Robert Smigel, and more. Bonuses: Interview with Carvey and Smigel; Deleted scenes; Unaired episode. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. PEYTON PLACE: PART ONE features the inaugural episodes of the hit series that made stars of young actors such as Mia Farrow, Ryan O’Neal, and Barbara Parkins in what became the first nighttime soap opera, and pushed the boundaries of censorship in the mid-60s. 31 episodes on 5 discs. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. E1 Entertainment releases A LITTLE PRINCESS, starring Nigel Havers and Amelia Shankley in this faithful adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s novel. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. THE RISE AND FALL OF REGINALD PERRIN stars Leonard Rossiter as a middle management exec who finds that the rat race and the routine of his very average life are driving him over the edge. Very funny, smart social satire, a classic of late ‘70s British television. Bonuses: Featurettes. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. GIGANTOR: THE COLLECTION—VOL. 1 features 26 episodes of the hit 1960s Japanese animated series about a giant, heroic robot who battled all evildoers. A landmark in the Japanese Anime movement. Bonuses: Interviews with series producers, Anime historians; Select audio commentary; Gigantor comic book issues. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 mono. A&E releases THE PREHISTORIC COLLECTION: FROM DINOSAURS TO THE DAWN OF MAN, an 8-disc collection of The History Channel’s greatest specials on the dawn of man. Bonuses: Additional footage; Bonus episode. Full screen. Dolby 2.0 stereo. 20th Century Fox releases AMERICAN DAD!: VOLUME 4, the hit animated series about CIA agent Stan Smith, working to make the world safer for extreme right wing democracy. Biting social satire, fun for precocious kids and adults, alike. Bonuses: Audio commentary; Deleted scenes; Featurettes. Full screen. Dolby 5.1 surround. Anchor Bay releases Z ROCK: SEASON 1, a scripted/reality show following the follies and foibles of hard-living rockers by night, and children's entertainers by day. Very funny and sometimes sad, with cameos from big names in comedy and music. Bonuses: Featurettes; Music video; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround. Finally, HBO releases TRUE BLOOD: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON, Alan Ball’s sexy, gory modern take on the vampire legend, set in the deep south of Louisiana bayou country. Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer and Sam Trammell star. Bonuses: Featurettes; Six audio commentaries with cast and crew. Widescreen. Dolby 5.1 surround.

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